Bill wants higher qualifications for NMC execs

The qualifications of Northern Marianas College officials and NMC’s spending history were placed under a microscope in a newly proposed legislation.

Authored by Vice Speaker Justo S. Quitugua, House Bill 15-134 seeks higher educational qualifications for members of the NMC Board of Regents, greater financial oversight of the college, and legislative appropriation of NMC revenues.

According to the bill, the academic background required of the NMC president and the regents are “antiquated” and have led to “a managerial dilution and a lack of credibility” on the part of the CNMI’s only public college.

To address this, the measure proposes that four members of board of regents have at least a master’s degree level of education, with the three other regents possessing at least a bachelor’s degree.

H.B. 15-134 also lists instances where the college allegedly misspent or attempted to misspend public funds on questionable operations and activities. The measure accuses NMC of:

* Previously spending several hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1999-2002 on a costly and mostly inoperative computer software system;

* Spending money on unnecessary and questionable consulting fees;

* Keeping private attorneys when NMC could use the legal services of the Attorney General’s Office;

* Wasting millions of taxpayers’ dollars in the controversial La Fiesta purchase;

* Unchecked spending on travel and miscellaneous items;

* Unknown spending on the regents’ stipends and travel; and

* Initially approving a $24,000 separation bonus for NMC president Antonio Deleon Guerrero.

Furthermore, Quitugua’s bill questioned “unexplained slices of NMC expenditures” for the approximately $18 million in revenues the college collects each year.

The bill cited specific items in NMC’s FY2005 budget, including $1.1 million in unspent monies; $1.3 million that was spent on rent, insurance and utilities; almost $600,000 spent on supplies and $2.8 million on “miscellaneous” expenditures; and $1.8 million spent on student services.

“[D]ue to NMC’s continuous fiscal problems and continuing claims of having no money, which is causing NMC’s cancellations and the removal of programs and services, it is necessary for the sake of students’ educational well being and the accreditation of NMC to modify the law to ensure better NMC fiscal responsibility,” states a portion of the bill.

The measure proposes to require NMC to deposit all revenues from tuition, fees, grant monies and all other charges for college services, in the general fund for appropriation by the Legislature.

The Saipan Tribune tried to reach NMC chairwoman Kimberlyn King-Hinds for comment, but she was unavailable at presstime.