Previous Story
Senate vote overrides Inos budget vetoes
The Senate unanimously voted to override several veto provisions in the budget act for fiscal year 2016.
The Senate voted to override Gov. Eloy S. Inos’ line item veto of “Section 501(c} and (d), which gave 100 percent reprogramming authority to the Chief Justice and mayors.
The Senate also voted to override Inos’ veto on Sec. 702(c), which was an allocation for the “drug court” in the CNMI.
The Senate lastly voted to override Inos’ veto Sec. 704(f), which allows 5 percent salary raises to law enforcement personnel.
Inos earlier wrote that this provision did not account for personnel on Rota and Tinian, which he said would create morale problems.
Inos also said requiring law enforcement personnel to use 5 percent of their personnel budget to fund this mandate would require agencies to cut staff and would run counter to the 25-percent cap on overtime.
During a Senate session yesterday, fiscal analyst David Demapan was to explain the Senate’s position that they did include money for Rota and Titian.
Demapan said that it was hard to find whether the 5 percent increase is included if looking at the “Schedule A” of the budget law, which showed a “whole amount.”
He said the way to determine whether that 5 percent salary increase allocation is included [is to] break it down into a t-account, reading to Senators one for Rota’s Division of Customs.
“On the personnel t-account, the total balance there is showing $144,401. Now that amount really ties into what is showing in schedule A, or public law 19-08. But looking at that amount, we cannot determine whether the 5 percent is included. But by looking at this T-account it shows there that $6,531 for wages and benefits is added on, and so that $144,401 contains the 5-percent salary increase. That’s how we put it,” he said.
“If we go to the others, it will be the same exercise,” he added.
Sen. Steve Mesngon (R-Rota) said it was sad to hear that the governor says that they did not include his own municipality. “That was a disgrace for me to hear that,” he said.
“I hope our people in Tinian and Rota, the law enforcement community, will understand now that yes we did give the two municipality what they deserve, as well as Saipan,” he added.
