Bicameral conference to pass budget

The House of Representatives and Senate aim to convene in a bicameral conference within the week hoping to reach an agreement to finally pass the CNMI budget for Fiscal Year 2017.

The House of Representatives, in an emergency session last Saturday at the House chamber of the Hon. Jesus P. Mafnas Memorial building, voted 18-2 to reject the Senate version of House Bill 19-196 or the CNMI Budget Act.

The session, which was scheduled at 1:30pm, began at 2:26pm and ended in less than an hour.

House Speaker Rafael S. Demapan (R-Saipan) appointed Vice Speaker Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan), Antonio P. Sablan (Ind-Saipan)—chair of the powerful House Ways and Means committee—and minority member Anthony T. Benavente (Ind-Saipan) in the House panel for the bicameral conference.

All 20 members of the House were present with Reps. Edwin P. Aldan (Ind-Tinian) and Glenn L. Maratita (R-Rota) voting in the negative on the amendments made by the Senate that was transmitted to the office of the House Speaker late Friday afternoon.

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres is expected to return to the CNMI today after successive trips to Alaska, to meet with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Washington, D.C. to testify in an oversight hearing that aims to review the economic impact of the CNMI-Only Transitional Worker nonimmigrant visa program, which is set to end in 2019.

Torres, in a statement, said he is aware of the issue in the Legislature and their disagreement when it comes to the passing of the Fiscal Year 2017 budget despite on an official trip.

“As it stands, both houses are expected to create a conference committee to address those disagreements. We will respect the legislative process as deliberations move forward and look forward to receiving a budget bill that continues to move the Commonwealth forward prior to the end of this fiscal year.”

Over $3 million

House Speaker Demapan, after Saturday’s less than one-hour emergency session, said the Senate made a significant change when it added another $3 million on the proposed budget for FY 2017. “The amount of changes is very significant, roughly over $3 million. Because of that number the House still needs to review the Senate’s version.”

“There are [also] six other significant changes in the budget and not only that there are also some legal concerns that needs to be verified and clarified by the House legal counsel. That’s exactly why I wanted to have this emergency session so we may expedite on things,” added Demapan.

He said that he is confident with Sablan’s experience on the House panel for the bicameral conference meeting. “I have faith on our chair [Sablan] since he is knowledgeable on this process. I believe he will call a meeting with our counterparts in the Senate, as early as Monday. I’m sure our chair will send out a notice to the Senate.”

Demapan added that they need to pass the budget and have it transmitted to Torres for his signature before Sept. 30 with Oct. 1 being the start of the new FY. “Hopefully they could meet as soon as possible because time is of the essence. We don’t have any room to continue the delay in the passing of this budget. We need to do this before Sept. 30.”

A government shutdown ensues if a budget is not passed after the deadline.

Sablan said the Senate just re-allocated the close to $3.2-million increase with $1.6 million earmarked for deficit reduction. He added that he has already instructed his staff to coordinate with the office of Senate President Francisco M. Borja (Ind-Tinian) so they could also appoint their members for the conference meeting.

“Since we rejected it, they need to appoint their panel. But they could not afford to appoint the members until they are notified. With the rejection, I asked our staff to coordinate with the Senate President’s office on how quickly can they act in appointing their members,” said Sablan.

“How quickly we can issue the joint notice to convene the bicameral conference? The sooner the better, I asked for [today] but I think it would be [tomorrow] morning since I also asked them to look on the possibility of convening on an emergency basis so we would not lose any day.”

Sablan said he is hoping a positive result would come out within the week. “If we can come back on Monday and start working on this, hopefully we can try to solve something within a couple of days. I know it is wishful thinking, the last time we went to conference we basically resolved it in a day and came back the following day with an agreed version. This one, we just want to resolve some legal issues in regards to this version.”

“I’m just concerned with the size of the Senate’s action. The more it is oftentimes, it is harder to resolve which means more time [is needed].”

Unforeseen delays

Sablan, however, said that unforeseen circumstances caused some delays. “Knowing that we only have two weeks, this should have gone to the governor by now, 30 days prior to the start of the new FY.”

“Since it is a new administration, the notice came a month later than the usual. Then we have all those re-identification of revenues so we have to go back and adjust the concurrent resolution to take into consideration the new revenues. That again got the process back and forth.”

“There’s also the 902 talks in DC and Hawaii, and others, members were off-island and we have to reschedule. We also have the settlement agreement issue where the secretary of Finance could not meet the schedule to appear in front of the committee so we have to reschedule that again.”

Rota’s needs

Rep. Maratita, one of the House members who voted no in rejecting the Senate’s version, said he supported the bill since almost $500,000 was added bringing the allocated budget for the CNMI’s southernmost island to roughly $7.2 million. “We’re trying to address a lot of issues. We have a lot of pressing issues back home. And I tried to everything that I could do to have it addressed at the House.”

He said the House could have just asked the legal counsel on the issues that they have some concerns rather than just rejecting it. “If we need to address whatever issue the legal counsel raises, let’s put it on the floor. But just to reject it and put it to a conference committee, I’m very concerned about that because this is time sensitive.”

“We have less than two weeks to address this issue otherwise we’re going to put a lot of our employees in another difficult situation. So I will not just sit there and allow this to happen. I want to move forward with this budget but unfortunately it was defeated.”

He added that the Senate’s increase could have been a big help for Rota especially the Medical Referral Program. “The [Medical Referral] program is in dire need of funds and everything else that the Office of the Mayor conveyed. Critical concerns and critical areas, those are the things that we need.”

Maratita said he remains confident that Rota’s economic development would pick up after being stagnant for many years. “We are the farthest, we are isolated. And economic activity has been slow in improvement.”

“We tried, despite what we are facing, we continue to go out there and reach out for investors, businesses to come out to Rota. Hopefully in the near future we could have those activities and I’m optimistic that we will be seeing a lot of changes and business development.”

Substantive changes

Senate Fiscal Affairs committee chair Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian), after their session last Friday, that their version only had substantive changes to address some needs. “Primarily on the provisions to ensure that we’re given the level of expenditure that we adopted on the concurrent resolution.”

“The Senate gave its best to distribute amongst the different agencies and municipalities that need for the coming fiscal year. Some, may I add, are extra ordinary, ordinary, or status quo, but nevertheless discussed over and over until we arrived with this product,” he added.

Hofschneider, who is expected to be part of the Senate panel for the bicameral conference meeting, said they only had less than three weeks to work on the budget after receiving it on Aug. 26.

Sen. Teresita Santos (R-Saipan), who is the Senate’s Legislative Secretary and Fiscal Affairs committee vice chair, said although they failed to address the concerns and requests made by various departments they still came up with a budget version that would provide funds to areas that are more important.

“For example, CHCC by allocating funding for the recruitment of physicians in specialized areas, the CNMI Medical Referral Program by allocating funding for additional FTEs including overtime pay for employees, increasing the fund of $100,000.00 for interisland medical referral patients from Rota for lodging and accommodations.”

They allocated funds for the 30 percent of bonuses for employees of the Tinian and Rota mayor’s offices. They also increased allocation for retroactive payments for Rota government employees who are owed for almost three decades by the central government and housing subsidy for [Tinian and Rota] students who are interested in attending the Northern Marianas College and the Northern Marianas Trades Institute.

She said that hopefully the Legislature could meet halfway and pass the budget to avoid a government shutdown with nine working days left before FY 2017 begins on Oct. 1. “It is my opinion that the Senate version is a doable or workable budget bill.”