OMB, Finance to remain separate

The Office of Management and Budget will remain separate from the Department of Finance.

Despite the Senate override of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres’ veto of Senate Bill 21-33, SS1, the House of Representatives failed to garner enough votes to quash the veto.

The bill, authored by Sen. Vinnie Sablan (Ind-Saipan), had proposed to transfer OMB to Finance Department. In his veto message, Torres said that restructuring OMB will cause unnecessary interruptions in the administrative businesses of the government, especially with the pandemic currently affecting the CNMI.,

In an earlier response to the veto, Sablan cited a “clear overlap” of government operations between OMB and Finance.

In Thursday’s session, House representatives were divided on the veto, with 11 voting yes to the veto, and nine voting no. With 20 members, 13 yes votes were needed for the override to happen.

Rep. Ivan Blanco (R-Saipan), who voted in support of the veto, likened the intent of the bill to the operations of the U.S. federal government. “If you look at the federal government, they have a separate office under the Office of Management and Budget and a separate office of the U.S. Treasury. Now, the bill, what it’s trying to do is…put the U.S. Office of Management and Budget under the U.S. Treasury. The reason why they don’t do that is the separation of controls on financial management and the systems.”

“Our auditors here continue to encourage the CNMI, that we practice internal controls, to separate duties and tasks, so that not one person or not one entity gets to control the setting of the ceiling of the budget, and at the same time, gets to expend those funds, with one stroke of a pen. The CNMI needs OMB to set the budget ceiling, and then you do all the paperwork, that’s internal controls, and then it goes to Finance, and Finance does the expenditure,” he added.

Blanco said his initial stance was to vote yes but reconsidered after looking into how the federal government does it. “The bill proposes that everything will be done under the Finance office. It’s scary, and that is why I voted no to the override. …I came up with a decision that it might not be in the best interest of the CNMI.”

“If any of the members are not happy with certain Cabinet member, I think we need to write a letter to the governor [and] express to the governor that the performance needs improvement. But cutting off an office may not be the best interest of the CNMI,” Blanco added.

Maximum effectiveness
Rep. Sheila Babauta (D-Saipan), who voted against the veto, said the time is right to do it—restructure the government and streamline responsibilities to achieve maximum effectiveness at minimum cost to taxpayers.

Some members have expressed frustrations with both agencies in terms of providing accurate, consistent, and timely information for lawmakers to make fiscal decisions for the CNMI, and called on both Finance and OMB to improve their systems.

In a separate interview, Finance Secretary David Atalig said that he respects the Legislature and its legislative rights in not overriding. “I’m in support of anything that helps financial management. The separation, that’s fine. I have no issues with that bill. I have no issues, either way. I work well with [OMB chief] Virginia Villagomez. I’ll continue to work well with her. …We’ll continue to do the job that we need to do for the CNMI government, for our administration to move forward.”