Ogo rejects Fitial’s budget proposal

House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Crispin Ogo has recommended the rejection of the Fitial administration budget submission for fiscal year 2007 due to “deficiency.”

Ogo, in a May 5 letter addressed to House Speaker Oscar M. Babauta, said that following consultation with the House legal counsel, “[I] found that the proposed budget is utterly deficient” and should be returned to the administration.

“The budget submission should be rejected and the administration should re-submit a proposed budget that is consistent with the specific mandates of 1 CMC section 7202,” said the chairman.

He said that, based on this provision, the administration should include the following information in its budget proposal:

– a detailed, current estimate of the total anticipated financial resources for the fiscal year;

– all anticipated revenues and Covenant funds;

– uncollected tax receipts and unobligated balances carried over from previous fiscal years available for appropriation; and

– grants, loans, or other monies due or received from the federal government, public and private agencies, broken down by source, type, amount, and whether available for appropriation or not, and governor’s recommendation and identification of funds for its use.

Ogo said his committee cannot move forward with the FY 2007 budget “until such time that a new and complete proposal is re-submitted.”

For his part, Babauta said there is no need to return the original submission since it already includes most of the items cited by Ogo.

The Speaker said the proposal lacks certain items such as the number of full-time employees but this is justified pending the administration’s on-going desk audit.

He said this information would be forwarded to the Legislature as soon as it is available.

“The proposal is complete. It’s untrue that its incomplete. That’s the claim made by the minority bloc. Now, some of the items cited by Rep. Ogo are not [really] there as in the past many, many years,” said Babauta.

He said the complete budget package for FY 2007 was only provided to his office and Ogo’s committee.

Other members, including the minority members, only received the governor’s transmittal letter and a summarized listing.

He said a complete presentation of the budget is in a CD-ROM that he said would be given to all members.

The Fitial administration submitted early last week a $193.5 million budget for the next fiscal year.

Ogo also wants the following specific data from the administration:

– a statement of the basis for all estimates of financial resources, including a cooperative analysis of available data for the two complete past years and the current year; schedules of amounts obligated during the periods and the amounts proposed for appropriation to all agencies; schedules of amount not requiring appropriation by the Legislature;

– a statement of the basis for all proposed appropriations, allocations, and expenditures, including an analysis of programs and projects in relation to a current multi-year, socioeconomic development plan for the Commonwealth, if one has been approved by joint resolution of the Legislature, which plan shall cover a period of at least five years including such fiscal year;

– statements of the numbers and types of personnel to be employed, by program, and function, the job titles and pay scales of all persons in each program and function, and descriptions of capital improvement projects, with a separate statement of the amounts of funds proposed to be appropriated for services and CIPs proposed for each island;

– a statement, broken down by agency, of the appropriations which would be necessary to fund…at the same level as the current year and without policy changes in those programs and activities except those required by law, provided that in making this estimate the governor may consider such items as inflation, economic growth, population, employment, caseloads, and salaries, and indicate which programs will terminate without statutory reauthorization;

– a statement, including a description and an estimate cost, of authorized CIPs to be funded and as to which the governor or other officials have contractual authority;

– statement of all programs and projects, including incomplete CIPs, for which appropriated funds will remain available for obligation, after the FY, for specified periods or until expended;

– a budget message of the governor, including statements of his disposition of the comments and submissions of the mayors and the Executive Assistant for Carolinian Affairs;

– and a collection of the latest available financial statements of the independent agencies and government corporations of the Commonwealth.