House fails to pass budget on 1st try

With only a month to go before the start of fiscal year 2012, the House of Representatives failed to pass yesterday a newly-substituted $102-million budget bill that drew heated debate among members because of floor amendments.

The House went into several session breaks from morning to late afternoon, only to go into recess until 10am today to decide on a pending amendment.

“We will try to pass it [Wednesday],” House Speaker Eli Cabrera (R-Saipan) said in an interview.

House passage of a budget bill came earlier last year—on Aug. 18. Because the House and Senate became deadlocked, the government partially shut down last year. Over 1,000 government employees were out of job for days until the Legislature finally passed a budget that the governor signed into law.

Three of four floor amendments were already adopted yesterday.

They included Rep. Trenton Conner’s (R-Tinian) floor amendment, and that of Rep. Ralph Demapan (Cov-Saipan) capping the number of positions funded by House members’ allocation from 100 to only 45.

The total amount of House members’ allocation, however, remained at over $1.031 million.

Demapan said more than half of these positions are not filled anyway because lawmakers opt to have independent contractors rather than hire full-time employees.

Other floor amendments are expected to be introduced and debated on today.

In yesterday’s session, the speaker described one of the floor amendments as creating an “unbalanced budget” and asked members to reconsider their vote. He later called them to his conference room.

When the House leadership members went back to the chamber, seven changed their votes from either “abstain” or “yes” to no, defeating Rep. Ray Yumul’s (R-Saipan) second amendment by a vote of 9-10 with one absence.

Yumul’s proposed amendment seeks to give portions of the $1.93 million in expected Compact Impact money to three other agencies—Public School System, Northern Marianas College, and Joeten/Kiyu Public Library—in addition to the only five agencies that are supposed to receive these federal funds.

Cabrera, during the session, said the money that these five agencies will receive from Compact Impact reimbursements are already included in the $102 million budgetary resources available for appropriation and reducing them will result in an “unbalanced budget.”

“This unbalanced budget—it will be unfair to send it to the Upper House,” Cabrera said, right after voting “no” to Yumul’s second amendment.

Only Rep. Froilan Tenorio (Cov-Saipan) was absent among 20 members.

As expected, Ways and Means Committee chair Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan) introduced yesterday a substitute version of the budget bill he had introduced Friday, but the changes didn’t affect most of the appropriations for government agencies and programs.

Yumul’s first floor amendment yesterday was adopted by the House by a vote of 18-0 with one abstention.

That amendment seeks to exclude PSS and NMC from a needed certification of funds from the Department of Finance when agencies want to hire or enter into contract with any entity.

Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan and other education officials were in the House chamber yesterday.

They asked the House for some $106,000 more so that PSS can meet the maintenance-of-effort requirement by the U.S. Department of Education.

Under Basa’s House Bill 17-215, House Substitute 1, PSS and the Board of Education will only get $28,081,200, which is short of some $106,000 to comply with the MOE requirement.

NMC has also asked for a budget of at least $5.2 million, but the House’s budget bill only gives the college over $4.018 million.
[B] La Fiesta[/B]

Rep. Fred Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) offered a floor amendment yesterday to the substitute bill, increasing the personnel budget for the Legislative Bureau from $911,617 to $1,111,617.

Deleon Guerrero also sought to significantly reduce the annual $200,000 lease payment for the La Fiesta property, to only $2,000, and give the difference to the Legislative Bureau.

But House minority leader Joseph Deleon Guerrero (R-Saipan) said that taking away money from lease payment means the CNMI government is reneging on its contractual obligation and might have legal consequences.

The speaker said the leadership will consult with its legal counsel and the administration on this, and called for a recess around 5pm yesterday.

Yesterday’s session was called at 10am but didn’t start on time. After public comments were heard around 11:15am, the speaker called for a break until 1:30pm.

At this point, Rep. Joseph Deleon Guerrero said all House members should now be given a copy of the substitute budget bill that the leadership prepared. Cabrera said that copies were still being produced, thus the need to go on a break until about 1:30pm.

Minority and majority members held separate informal meetings to go over the substitute bill before 1:30pm. The session resumed around 2pm.

Basa’s 35-page substitute budget bill has only a few amendments to the one he introduced on Friday.

The amounts of two refunding bond payments were changed, owing to typographical error, but the net budgetary resources available for appropriation still totaled $102 million.

Total estimated revenues, however, increased from $104,931,329 to $104,966,016.

This resulted from a change in the Department of Public Lands’ projected revenue from $2,931,329 in the original budget bill to $2,966,016.

The term “full-time employees” was also changed to “number of positions.”

The substitute bill also removed a subsection governing the governor’s 100 percent reprogramming authority over funds under the Executive Branch.

The amount reserved for utilities payment also increased to $5,050,000, from $4,750 in the original bill.

Basa’s substitute bill also gives money derived from not filling vacancies within 60 days, to an account that the Finance secretary will use for payment to the CNMI Retirement Fund.

Under the Executive Branch budget, the appropriations for the Office of the Governor, the Office of the Lt. Governor, and the Total Other Offices of Governor were separated.

DPL’s number of personnel also increased from 65 to 67 under the substitute bill.

The substitute HB 17-215 gives a budget of $4 million to the Judiciary, over $4.509 million to the Legislature, and over $29.394 million to the Executive Branch.

Rota’s budget is at over $4.474, while Tinian’s is over $4.361 million. Saipan and the Northern Islands are proposed to have a budget of over $1.219 million.

The Senate, meanwhile, is just waiting for the House to pass the budget bill.

Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) said the Senate wants to prevent another partial government shutdown.