House eyes Tuesday passage of budget

Antonio Sablan

The House Ways and Means committee has finished deliberations on the fiscal year 2017 budget and is looking to touch up a final product for passage by the full House by next Tuesday, Ways and Means chair Rep. Antonio Sablan (Ind-Saipan) said yesterday.

Sablan said they have reallocated or moved around $2.46 million of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres’ proposed budget, which was $137.02 million.

The committee tried to accommodate urgent requests from various departments and agencies as gathered from recent budget hearings, Sablan said, reallocating monies to help agencies in dire need of additional personnel and resources.

“We hope what we’ve done here would help improve public service,” the lawmaker told Saipan Tribune after a committee meeting ended yesterday.

Sablan explained the reallocations were made possible when some monies were freed up under the Department of Public Safety and as a result of casino tax revenues going toward utility obligations for the local hospital, for example.

He said the DPS commissioner communicated that funding for some personnel would continue to be funded under federal money, freeing up roughly $300,000 for other priority requests.

A bill to appropriate the Saipan casino’s business gross revenue tax, also authored by Sablan, will basically pay off $1.8 million earlier allotted in the budget to the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. for outstanding utilities.

With the expected passage of the BGRT bill, House Bill 19-194, that money will no longer be needed for the hospital, freeing up the $1.8 million for reallocation. HB 19-194 allots $16 million for the hospital’s outstanding balance.

Sablan said they were able to finally retire the government’s civil service employees owed salary adjustments from lump sum payments from Public Law 7-31, in the amount of roughly $400,000.

Every other employee on Tinian and Saipan who were entitled compensation under PL 7-31 had been paid, save these Rota employees.

According to Sablan, the committee’s reallocations included: $10,000 for the Department of Corrections’ salary adjustments; $132,000 to the Zoning Board for a enforcement officer and two enforcement technicians; $200,000 to the Civil Service Commission; $685,000 to the Legislative Bureau to address back up power generation capacity, a big chunk of which is $365,000, $394,000 to the Legislature; $182,000 to the Northern Marianas Sports Association; $100,000 to the CNMI Superior Court for two probation officers and one deputy clerk for Rota; $7,000 for Judiciary administration for minor salary adjustments.

They also gave additional $40,000 to the Ayuda Network; $37,000 to Karidat, $55,00 to Tinian Labor, $55,000 to Tinian Agriculture department, and $55,000 to the Tinian operations and maintenance, as well as $50,000 to the Tinian mayor’s office for inter-island medical referral.

They also gave the Rota Mayor’s Office $459,000 for personnel, $400,000 of which is for salary obligations under PL 7-31.

The Department of Public Works was given $66,000 and also $44,000 and $56,000 for its technical service and roads and grounds divisions respectively.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources was given $20,000 for surveying equipment; DLNR’s Rota agriculture was given $33,000 for a conservation coordinator; Rota Fish and Wildlife got a conservation officer 1 funded at $16,000; Rota police got additional $10,000; and DLNR Agriculture got $10,000 for fuel.

The Commonwealth Museum got $100,000 for personnel and also to restructure office administrator position to administrative officer, Sablan said.

Sablan said on Friday they would review their final product to make sure there were no discrepancies or issues and adopt a budget version with schedules summarizing personnel, utilities, and other worksheet on Monday.

“Once we adopt those we will be ready to set a schedule for session to entertain budget hopefully by Tuesday,” said Sablan. “We are looking forward to present the budget to full House by Tuesday. That’s what we are looking forward to. We are confident that we are able to do that. We’ll give ourselves until Friday morning and then go from there.

“By Monday afternoon…we should have a version that is already clean, that would be entertained in the next session,” he said.