‘Might as well shut down Legislature’

The Senate’s proposal to “zero out” the 29 lawmakers’ allocation is holding hostage the fiscal year 2012 budget, said House members who also warned yesterday that the Legislature might as well shut down without operational funding and leave close to 200 individuals jobless.

But some senators said the House should give more to the Public School System, Northern Marianas College, Rota, and Tinian.

Identifying the main areas of disagreements is one thing, but reaching a compromise on these differences is another, said House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan), who heads the House conference committee that will work with their Senate counterpart to come up with $102-million budget bill that’s acceptable to both chambers.

Basa said it is “absurd” that senators want to zero out the lawmakers’ individual allocation.

“Might as well shut down the Legislature without providing funding to operate the Legislature,” he said.

The House proposal is to give each lawmaker a discretionary or operational budget of some $51,000, much lower than the FY 2011 budget law’s $80,000.

House members said without discretionary funding, lawmakers will also become office managers and community workers because they won’t have money to hire staff and operate their offices.

Basa said from $51,000 in annual discretionary allowance, he said he could go down to $20,000 or $30,000 and give the difference to NMC and PSS.

But other members said a $20,000 annual discretionary fund will still be too low, although they said they can allow “zeroing out” the leadership account if that’s what it takes to meet the Senate in the middle and avoid a shutdown.

Vice Speaker Felicidad Ogumoro (Cov-Saipan), for her part, said it is “troubling” for the Senate to propose a budget with zero operational funding not only for the individual lawmakers but also for the leadership accounts.

“But I’m hopeful that the conference committee will be able to resolve the differences and get this bill out so that we can pass the budget before Oct. 1,” she said.

Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota), in a separate interview yesterday, said the Senate’s goal is to pass a budget on time and to avoid a government shutdown.

“I would urge the committee to review the budget of PSS, NMC. From there, it will be up to the committee,” he said.

Basa would have wanted a joint conference committee meeting starting at 10am today, but senators will be on Rota today for public hearings on initiatives.

Senators said these public hearings were scheduled way ahead of time. They also said that the House waited until late August to introduce and pass a budget bill when they had since April 1 to work on it.

Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee chair Sen. Jovita Taimanao (Ind-Rota), head of the Senate conferees, said the first meeting of the House and Senate conferees will be on Monday.

Senators cut the Legislature and the Executive Branch’s budget by over $2 million and gave them to PSS, NMC, Rota, Tinian, and other programs. They also gave an additional $1 million each to NMC and PSS, a funding that will come from a fee required by the federalization law.

Last year’s partial government shutdown was caused mainly by differences in the number of work hours to be cut every two weeks as part of austerity measures. The House wanted 16 hours while the Senate wanted only eight hours. The Senate gave in.

‘Yumul replaced’

House Speaker Eli Cabrera (R-Saipan), during a session yesterday, announced his decision to replace Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan) with Rep. Sylvester Iguel (Cov-Saipan) as a member of the House conference committee.

The speaker’s decision resulted from a consideration of Yumul’s “no” vote on a motion to reject the Senate’s substitute budget bill.

Yumul said he’s not upset and not offended that the speaker replaced him with Iguel.

He said he will continue to advocate for continued funding for individual members’ operation.

Rep. Trenton Conner (R-Tinian) said it would have been better if the House conferees also involve members from Tinian and Rota.

Rep. Teresita Santos (Ind-Rota) said one of the main causes of a budget deadlock is a failure to reach a compromise or unwillingness to meet a common negotiation.

“As such, it is my hope that as legislators, we take into full consideration all the issues and/or concerns raised by various entities, departments and agencies, and thoroughly assessing their merits, thence providing a realistic or workable budget for the CNMI and averting another government shutdown. But this again can only be achieved through a thoughtful compromise or middle ground,” she said.

The Legislature and the Executive Branch have until Sept. 30 to pass a budget bill and sign it into law; otherwise, there will be a government shutdown starting on Oct. 1.

A shutdown will continue until a budget is passed and signed. This means over 1,000 employees will be out of jobs for as long as it takes the lawmakers to pass a budget bill that the governor could sign.

The Fitial administration has started preparing for a shutdown, including identifying the critical positions that will be exempted from it.