Bill adjusting FY ’18 budget passes House

The House of Representatives last Tuesday unanimously passed a measure that adjusts the fiscal year 2018 budget, noting critical expenditures essential for the operation of a semi-autonomous government agency.

Rep. Angel A. Demapan’s (R-Saipan) House Bill 20-135, a bill that tweaks the fiscal year 2018 budget in order to reflect critical expenditures the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. needs to function, passed the House after garnering the unanimous support of all 20 members last week.

According to Demapan, CUC unintentionally left out key expenses such as the purchase of fuel, oil, and others. However, these do not affect the fiscal year 2018 budget since CUC uses its own revenue for operations.

“CUC comes up with their own budget because it is their own revenue. We don’t provide general funds to CUC, just like the Department of Public Lands. They [both] use the money they make,” said Demapan, adding that prior to allowing both agencies to push through with their expenditures, both DPL and CUC budgets must first be approved by the Legislature.

The total difference in budgets is a little over $101 million. Prior to H.B. 20-135, CUC asked for a total budget of $141.8 million; the bill, if enacted, bumps up the expenditures to $242.9 million.

“There were some budget items that were inadvertently left out, the biggest one being the budget to purchase fuel for the power plant,” said Demapan. “This bill revises their budget per their request so that they can be allowed to use the money to purchase fuel.”

Since CUC and DPL are autonomous agencies, both agencies—along with a few others—should first seek approval for their budget, which is derived from their revenues.

“There is still that legislative oversight because we are the appropriations authority, so if that is left open, then there are no rules and structure. …Having these checks and balances ensures there is accountability on how much is spent on personnel and how much is spent on operations,” said Demapan.

CUC executive director Gary Camacho, who attended the session with several key employees of CUC said they were “extremely happy.”

“We get a lot of pressure early on this year and I think we try to put a budget together and we did. However, there was a couple of key components that were missing,” he said, adding that the addition of fuel, engine maintenance, and the purchase of oil were “critical to [CUC] programs” and had to be inserted.

“It’s wonderful to get 100 percent support on it,” he said.

H.B. 20-135 now heads to the Senate for action.