House budget bill cuts funding for MVA, PSS, NMC, health services

These are based on the five-page summarized comparison of the governor’s original and revised fiscal year 2013 budget submission versus the House leadership’s original and final bill.

This final bill became the 36-page House Bill 17-313 that was pre-filed yesterday afternoon.

House Ways and Means Committee chair Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan), main author of the $114-million budget bill, said yesterday that the leadership plans to pass the measure this afternoon. The session is at 2:30pm.

“We have the votes to pass it, and give the Senate ample time to review the bill,” Basa said in an interview after a committee meeting.

Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan) said the minority bloc is aware that it will boil down to the votes but they are hoping that the leadership would not rush to pass the budget bill today without giving the full body a chance to review it for days.

“I applaud [Rep.] Basa and the rest of the leadership for working on this bill. But I would want to hear first about the logic behind the decreases in appropriations for critical agencies compared to the governor’s revised submission. I want to understand how the leadership ended up with this bill. Maybe they are seeing something we’re not seeing or know something we don’t know,” Yumul told Saipan Tribune.

House minority leader Joe Deleon Guerrero (R-Saipan) echoed Yumul’s sentiment. “I hope they allow for time to review the bill and not railroad through [today],” he said.

This early, senators are appalled by the budget bill but would wait for it to pass the House before fully commenting on it.

Senate Vice President Jude Hofschneider (R-Tinian) said it’s “quite interesting they will go to that extent,” upon learning that the House leadership budget bill cut the governor’s revised budget for Tinian by $471,093-from $5.037 million to $4.566 million.

Fitial’s revised budget for Rota was $4.371 million, but the House leadership raised it to $4.566 million to the same level as Tinian’s.

The House leadership maintained the governor’s budget for Saipan and Northern Islands at $1.543 million.

Rep. Edmund Villagomez (Cov-Saipan) said he has reservations about the pre-filed bill. Other members said they will reserve comment until the bill is formally introduced and discussed today.

But even the House leadership assumes that the Senate will reject the $114 million bill, and go into a conference committee.

The House leadership maintained the governor’s revised budget for the Judiciary at $3.807 million, down from the original proposal of $4 million. But House leadership members said the decline is because of the anticipated decrease in employer contribution for retirement because of the planned transition to the U.S. Social Security system.

Fitial’s revised budget for the Legislature is $4.920 million, down from his original submission of $5.122 million also because of retirement contribution decrease.

The House leadership, however, raised the Legislature’s budget to $5.887 million, and this includes increases in the members’ operational account and the budget of the Legislative Bureau to be able to hire an additional counsel and a part-time economist, among other things.

Fitial’s revised budget for the Executive Branch was $5.037 million, but the House leadership cut it to $4.566 million-a difference of $471,000.

The governor’s revised budget for NMC is $5.189 million. The House leadership reduced it by $437,226 to $4.751 million.

MVA also got a cut of $550,000, from the governor’s revised submission of $2.125 million to $1.575 million.

Basa said they are anticipating that the new $15 tourism and environmental fee would make up for the cut in the MVA budget.

The House leadership gave PSS $28.563 million, down by $936,194 from the governor’s revised submission of $29.5 million.

House leadership members retained the $1.987 million appropriation for the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., down from the original $2.25 million, again because of anticipated drop in employer contribution to the retirement system.

The Medicaid reimbursement budget was slashed to $1.417 million by the House leadership, compared to Fitial’s revised proposal of $3.332 million.

The House leadership also decreased the medical referral budget to $3.269 million, from the governor’s revised submission of $4.634 million.

Basa pointed out that healthcare-related programs funded by local funds may have cuts but they are also funded by federal funds and other sources of funding such as Compact Impact.

All other programs, services and agencies got either increases or decreases.

Under the governor’s revised budget as a result of a $12-million increase in anticipated revenue, the total identified budgetary resources for 2013 is $133.641 million. Of this amount, $114.320 million is available for appropriation. This still brings back the CNMI government’s budget to the level of over 20 years ago.

By Haidee V. Eugenio
Reporter