FY ’17 budget bill goes to Torres

The bicameral conference committee meets to discuss certain issues regarding the CNMI Fiscal Year 2017 budget last Friday at the House Speaker’s conference room inside the Hon. Jesus P. Mafnas Memorial Building in Capital Hill. (Jon Perez)

The bicameral conference committee finally adopted its report and the budget bill after members agreed to give back nearly $1 million of the appropriated funds for the Marianas Visitors Authority in Fiscal Year 2017. This was one of the issues that the House of Representatives and the Senate disagreed on that pushed the passing of the CNMI budget to a conference committee.

The House and Senate held separate emergency sessions last Saturday where the chair of their respective panels delivered a summary of the report. All 29 members of the CNMI Legislature—20 House and nine Senate members—unanimously passed House Bill 19-196.

The House, in an emergency session last week, voted 18-2 to reject the Senate amendments after the latter reduced by $1.59 million MVA’s funds and distributed it to other agencies like the Saipan Mayor’s Office and the Division of Parks and Recreation.

The conferees, last week, adopted the committee report after finding a middle ground in key areas of the budget bill. The six-member panel summarized the report to 15 amendments that they discussed in three days of marathon talks.

They restored $510,000 to the General Fund Deficit Reduction, while the remaining $500,000 was used for a 10-percent matching fund for the Legislator to buy a generator, renovate its housing unit, and to acquire security cameras.

The conferees also decided to put back $990,000 from MVA’s funds and agreed to spread $600,000 to the Department of Public Works ($250,000 to redesign and reconstruct road in Hotel Street Western Garapan to ease parking congestion); Mayor of Saipan ($200,000 for cleanup, beautification, and foreign student exchange programs); Division of Parks & Recreation ($100,000 for cleanup, maintenance, and beautification of parks, tourist, and recreational sites); and Commonwealth Museum ($50,000 for repair and renovation).

The committee also reduced the Rota Mayor’s Office budget from $470,000 to $400,000, an allocation for the payment to employees of the First Senatorial District pursuant to Public Law 7-31 or the Salary Adjustment Act; $45,056 is for the 30 percent Retirement bonus of five employees; $30,000 for the procurement of a van that will be used by the Rota Liaison and Medical Referral on Saipan; and $20,000 for the repair and renovation of the leaching field/septic tank and water reservoir at the Marianas Medical Referral Center on Saipan.

In the Second Senatorial District, they transferred $25,000 each from the Tinian Mayor’s Office to two other agencies. The Tinian Department of Public Safety will be getting $25,000 for its “War on Ice” campaign and another $25,000 to the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs-Tinian for the procurement of one vehicle.

Some of the issues in the appropriations were either struck out, deleted, or re-allocated.

HB 19-196, SS1 goes to Gov. Ralph DLG Torres where his office would review it together with their Legal Counsel, the Attorney General, and the Office of Management and Budget, and Finance.

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Torres said the Legislators know how important the FY 2017 budget is. “I thank the Legislators for acting on this budget. Obviously, they know how important it is for them, and for us to sign it to prevent a partial government shutdown.”

“This is just in time, I will have a few days to review it and address my concerns with our legal counsel and the Attorney General, and would also invite OMB and Finance to hash it out before signing it.”

House Speaker Rafael Demapan (R-Saipan) acknowledged everyone’s work adding that putting together the budget bill is a difficult task. “I acknowledged the hard work given by all the conferees. We all know that putting numbers together has always been a challenge.”

Vice speaker Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan), who acted as the House chair in the conference committee, thanked all members of the House panel from their Legislative Bureau’s staff to the Legal Counsel.

“This was not an easy talk but through our overall efforts, we managed to work on it. Some parts were very contentious but through the open mindedness and attitude of the conference committee, we came together and worked it out to come up with a reasonable product,” said Deleon Guerrero.

He also thanked Vicky Villagomez, the Governor’s Office’s special assistant for OMB. “Under normal conference committee it is really just three members each that were allowed to participate. We allowed her to be present because of the short time we had left. We wanted to make sure the governor is aware of the changes that could facilitate in signing this bill into law.”

Deleon Guerrero headed the House panel in the absence of Ways and Means committee chair Antonio Sablan (Ind-Saipan), who went on a compassionate leave following the untimely passing of his mother. Rep. Antonio Benavente (Ind-Saipan) and Rep. Felicidad Ogumoro (R-Saipan) were the other members of the House panel.

Sablan, who attended the House session last Saturday, thanked his colleagues for their understanding and appreciated the work of Deleon Guerrero in being the acting chair. “I know the conference committee is a difficult park of the budget deliberations and I had to ask the House speaker and vice speaker to be allowed to be away from conference work because of an untimely personal matter.”

“But before I went on leave, I sat down with the vice speaker to discuss the foundation and framework on how the House should proceed with the conference committee. This process is difficult but they managed to iron out the differences and took a few days to do this.”

Rep. Roman Benavente (Ind-Saipan) also thanked all members of the conference committee for their hard work in coming up with a compromised budget. “Although there were a lot of bargaining issues, all members managed to work together. We have an obligation to pass the budget and we cannot let the people, whom that we serve, down. We must make sure to avoid a shutdown.”

Sen. Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian), which headed the Senate panel being the Fiscal Affairs Committee chair, said they understood the consequence if they failed to come up with a solution on the issues that were contested.

“We got our ducks in order. We know that we can come up with an agreement, a compromised bill. We understood its consequences, so we put our minds together in making sure that we have a product that is reasonable to all.”

“Things were approved accordingly. All civil service employees will be getting their 5-percent increase based on their salaries. That is actually that is consistently put forth on everyone’s efforts.”

Sen. Teresita Santos (R-Rota), who is also the Fiscal Affairs Committee vice chair, said that although not all of those on the Senate’s version of the budget proposal were adopted by the conferees still those that remained were of crucial importance.

“For example, increasing allocation for our medical referral patients’ stipends, funding for our inter-island medical referral patients lodging accommodations, and additional FTEs for our medical referral programs,” said Santos.

“In addition, the first and second senatorial districts budget allocation were increased including providing a provision where the mayors of the respective islands can reprogram funds from the utilities allocation for any other purposes. Such provision, would allow the mayors to use the funds based on the municipality or departments’ needs or to augment those that were not adopted by the bicameral conferees but of vital importance to the islands.”