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6 MONTHS AFTER BOARD REVIVAL
CUC remains under state of emergency
Gov. Eloy S. Inos has extended anew a declaration of a state of emergency for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., six months since the revival of a board of directors after a nine-year hiatus.
Continuing to place CUC under a state of emergency allows the governor to reprogram funds, and suspend procurement laws or rules to address such an emergency, among other things.
The Legislature also continues to accept the governor’s CUC emergency declaration which is extended every 30 days. The latest extension of such emergency declaration was on Aug. 15.
The governor, in his Executive Order 2014-11, continued to cite a financial crisis and a technical worker crisis for his latest extension of the declaration.
CUC is owed $20 million by the Public School System and the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., and is owed over millions more by residential users, the governor said.
Inos maintains that the CNMI’s recent economic improvement is only marginal and that the economy and the government’s finances are still fragile.
As with previous declarations, Inos said CUC often only has days’ worth of purchased diesel to power its system because it lacks the funds to buy oil from its sole, cash-only supplier. CUC has no credit or other means to buy fuel than the revenue it collects from its customers.
The governor also said CUC continues to lack skilled technical U.S. citizen workers so it needs to continue to employ skilled technical foreign workers. Skilled workers and a responsive support system are key to CUC’s operation success, particularly for preventive maintenance.
The corporation bears a substantial obligation to deliver highly technical work on time to the satisfaction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pursuant to two sets of consent or stipulated orders.
“CUC’s renewal of contracts and hiring of foreign expert workers is necessary to sustain the integrity of CUC’s systems. Thus, continued relief from the legislative prohibition on hiring foreign national workers is necessary to ensure the delivery of uninterrupted power services to the people of the Commonwealth,” the governor added.
