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Torres signs bill amending budget
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres signed into law over the weekend a bill that amends the fiscal year 2018 budget to accommodate several of the Commonwealth government’s agencies as well as provide funding allocations for a trades institute.
Authored by Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan), Public Law 20-41 amends Public Law 20-11, or the budget law for fiscal year 2018, to reflect the expenditures stated in the amended expenditure report submitted by the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.
CUC, being a semi-autonomous agency, does not directly receive funding support from the CNMI government. The corporation relies mostly on revenues generated by ratepayers, and every fiscal year submits a proposed budget on how they plan to spend the money.
However, due to the corporation inadvertently omitting several key expenditures from their proposal, the corporation requested the CNMI Legislature to amend the budget law for fiscal year 2018.
P.L. 20-41 bumps up the fiscal year 2018 budget for CUC to over $121.4 million, which was originally just over $70.9 million.
Demapan’s legislation unanimously passed the House with no amendments.
CUC executive director Gary Camacho said in a previous interview with Saipan Tribune that the costs that were inadvertently omitted included several “key components” such as the purchase of fuel, engine maintenance, and the purchase of oil, which are all “critical to [CUC] programs.”
The Senate later amended Demapan’s bill to allocate funding for the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. as well as the Northern Marianas Trades Institute.
A new section in P.L. 20-11 was amended to reflect allocating CHCC with $200,000 for its Diabetes Care and Control Center as well as allocating at least $1 million from the CW Worker fee funds, which is now administered by the CNMI Scholarship Office, to NMTI.
NMTI executive director Agnes McPhetres told Saipan Tribune in a previous interview that since Torres designated the administration of CW fee funds to the Commonwealth Scholarship Office for fiscal year 2018, the office allocated about $500,000 to the lone trades school in the CNMI, causing the institution to be at risk of closing classes due to the lack of funding to support the extra manpower they hired in between semesters.
