Fitial has ‘concerns’ about budget

Gov. Benigno Fitial has concerns about the revised fiscal year 2009 budget recently passed by the House of Representatives, according to press secretary Charles Reyes.

Reyes said it’s premature to say what the governor will do with the bill because the Senate must still approve it, but the main concern was the lack of “critical cost-cutting measures—austerity holidays, reprogramming authority, and a reduction in Retirement Fund contributions.”

“Those specific actions were not incorporated,” he added.

The House of Representatives approved a reduced $156.76 million budget on Wednesday. The budget includes $148.1 million of projected government revenue, augmented with $5.17 million in Compact Impact funds and $3.5 million in “unencumbered” money taken from numerous accounts outside the general fund.

A separate $3.1 million is being proposed for the Department of Public Lands, whose revenue is constitutionally reserved for the agency’s administrative costs and for investment by the Marianas Public Land Trust, and cannot be used for central government operations.

Last month both the House and Senate passed a $165.4 million budget, but Fitial notified them that he was vetoing it because of an $8 million drop in projected revenue. He then slashed government budgets across the board by 5.5 percent for the rest of the fiscal year. The House of Representatives failed earlier this week to override the governor’s veto of the $165.4 million budget.

Rep. Ray Yumul, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he used the governor’s 5.5 percent budget cut as a model for the revised budget.

“Basically we followed what the governor did when he took the $156 million [in local government revenue] and taking that 5.5 percent and reducing it to $148 million,” he said. “We’ve complied with that. We complied with his notification, so everything we did is based on his notification to us through his transmittals with the Secretary of Finance. So this legislation should be exactly what he’s looking for.”

The concerns do not mean the governor is going to reject the budget outright, Reyes said, but added that the administration hopes the Senate members will consider those concerns when they take up the budget discussion.

“It’s a very difficult issue,” he said. “It’s difficult for everyone given the declining revenue.”

Sen. Maria Pangelinan, chairwoman of the Senate’s Fiscal Affairs Committee, said she believes the other members of the Senate will vote to pass the revised budget with the House’s amendments.

As for Fitial approving the budget, Pangelinan said she’s unsure.

“I don’t know. I really do not know,” she said. “I would hope he would be pleased and sign the budget, we really complied with what he proposed to the Legislature.”

The Senate is expected to take up the budget bill on Tuesday. If passed it will go to the governor who will have 20 days to approve, line-item veto, or veto it altogether.