NMC, PSS exempted from ’07 budget cuts

The Fitial administration confirmed yesterday that Northern Marianas College and the Public School System would be exempted from the budget reductions for fiscal year 2007.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial announced the good news during the proclamation signing for Marianas March Against Cancer at the DFS Galleria

NMC and PSS will join the Marianas Visitors Authority, municipalities, mayor’s offices, and the Legislature on the list of agencies that will be spared from the budget cut in FY 2007.

NMC, however, is not out of the woods yet as Fitial stressed that the islands’ lone tertiary institution has not been exempted from the cost reduction in FY 2006 “because we don’t have the money.”

The Fitial administration earlier proposed to further reduce the government’s annual appropriation to $193.4 million for fiscal year 2007.

This is a $5-million cut or 2.5-percent reduction from the current fiscal year’s already reduced budget of $198.5 million, and nearly $20-million lower than the last enacted operating budget of $213 million.

In his budget transmittal letter to the Legislature, Fitial said he believes that the $193.5-million proposed budget “will be sufficient if managed accordingly to provide for essential public services, address our obligation to the Retirement Fund in a fiscally responsible manner, and fund an economic recovery plan.”

Fitial had said the FY07 budget would be “our first balanced budget in recent years.”

To date, the CNMI’s lone community college is operating at a reduced budget of $6,535,722—“an 18.78-percent budget cut from the original budget”; PSS is also operating under a continuing resolution budget of $37.2 million.

NMC says it has already cut operational expenses to a point where it is “in the throes of losing or affecting different programs as well as accreditations.”

The NMC budget for the current fiscal year is already way below the continuing resolution level of $8,046,739 from the last enacted operating budget of $213 million.

NMC recently trimmed its operations budget for the current fiscal year to $1.21 million but is still lobbying the Legislature to allow it keep $307,539 of the $1.511 million budget cut intended for the community college.

The internal budget cuts taken were from the following: hiring freeze amounting to $588,356; operations budget cuts of $465,122; tapping of contingency fund amounting to $75,000; cancellation of the supplemental retirement worth $50,000; and partial nursing position freeze from March to September amounting to $25,000.

Earlier, the NMC Board of Regent unanimously decided to encourage “Student Services” and “Financial Aid” staff to facilitate various workshops and training sessions for students to know and be familiar with several financial assistance programs available on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota to address the new tuition and fee increases.