Probe on Torres’ NI trip postponed to next week

The House Special Committee on Fiscal Review of Executive Expenditures will begin the investigation into Gov. Ralph DLG Torres’ executive expenditures as well as his recent Northern Islands trip next week.

According to committee member Rep. Tina Sablan (D-Saipan), the committee is set to discuss subpoenas that the committee will issue to various government agencies involved in the investigation of executive expenditures next Thursday.

“We are going to discuss the subpoenas the committee was going to be asked to vote on so we need a majority vote to issue a subpoena. We had a number of subpoenas we were going to request for Finance and for other agencies that have been involved,” she said.

Additionally, on the minority’s side, Sablan said they asked the committee to obtain records related to Torres’ recent Northern Island trip involving multiple agencies. That would involve Finance, the Department of Public Safety, the Marianas Visitors Authority, the Northern Islands Mayor’s Office, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the Division of Fish and Wildlife. “There may be others but that’s just the start,” she said.

The minority also wants the committee to obtain records related to Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC’s community benefit fund, over which Torres has enforcement authority under the casino license agreement.

“We in the minority have filed an Open Government Act request on the community benefit fund with the governor’s office back in February and the record that we got only account for a very small fraction of what should have been paid into this fund by Imperial Pacific International. What we are proposing is that we get those records directly from Imperial Pacific International and also from the Casino Commission on some of the documents that were withheld or redacted by the governor’s office,” she said.

The committee was set to act yesterday but, due to technical issues on their website, the committee was unable to act on anything and postponed the meeting. Instead, the committee had a briefing on the legislative subpoena process and what the statute says about the committee’s powers as an investigative committee.

“We couldn’t have an official committee meeting…because, unfortunately, we learned that the notice that should have gone out so that the public would know about this meeting did not go out. Usually, we publish these notices of our meeting on our website but the server has been down for a number of days, so it didn’t come out until today but we needed it to be issued at least 72 hours ago to be in compliance with the Open Government Act. …To be on the safe side, we decided not to take action,” Sablan said.