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70-plus miss financial disclosure deadline
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Posted on Jun 01 2006
Over 70 government officials missed this year’s deadline for filing financial disclosure statements, according to the Office of the Public Auditor.
Wilma Atalig, administrative assistant for the OPA Ethics and Compliance Unit, said that only 473 government officials made it to the final deadline, which ended Wednesday, May 31, 2006.
Atalig also reported that 310 of the filers submitted their financial disclosure reports before the initial May 1 deadline. The 163 others filed during the 30-day grace period.
This means that over 10 percent of the 545 government officials who are required by law to file financial disclosure statements will start incurring a $10 fine for each day that their report is late.
Atalig said two late filers came in yesterday. Both intend to provide justification for their late submission and seek a waiver of the fine.
“I don’t know what else we could have done,” public auditor Michael Sablan expressed his frustration with the late filings. “Our office went our way since March to remind people about this requirement. We had an intern make phone calls for a week to remind each filer of the deadline. We had three notaries public to assist filers. We issued announcements in the media. We even sent staff to Tinian and Rota this week to accept filings. This is not discretionary; it’s mandated by law.”
He said that one of the 70 who have not filed reports was an elected official. The rest are members of boards, commissioners, task force members, Cabinet officials, and other appointees.
About 30 of those who missed the deadline are from Rota and Tinian.
“We will continue to make efforts to call those 70,” Sablan said.
Appointed and elected officials are required to submit financial disclosure statements every year to demonstrate any possible conflict of interest in the performance of their official duties.
