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What’s your solution?
Dear people of the Commonwealth: By nature, I am what you would refer to as the quiet type and stick to my family matters. I am a retiree since 1999 and I have worked for our Commonwealth government at the Department of Finance, Finance Section for 20 years. Like most retired people, I am proud to say that I earned my living and benefits fair and square.
My purpose in writing this letter is because, you see, I have worked for 20 years and have been retired for 14 years and now displaced by our government for its failure to deliver the constitutional mandate of paying my retirement benefit in full—not be shorted 25 percent in cuts to my retirement benefits. As a responsible parent, I am now forced to find a job to supplement by retirement cut.
Now that the Legislature passed the casino, EGM, and VLT laws, which the government have signed into laws and for the first time our government has shown some concrete plans to address the retirement dilemma, we have outsiders and our own local people jumping and making a raucous by passing anti-casino and anti-electronic gaming petitions around. Let me ask bluntly, what do you offer in return? What is your proposed concrete solution?
We have a failing CUC, CHC, and the Retirement Fund, all competing for the limited resources that this government proposes to operate with. Do you know that both the Public School System and Northern Marianas College are protected by the Constitution too for their funding allocation?
I humbly ask these people circulating anti-casino and anti-electronic gaming petitions, and those putting all those billboards that litter our streets, to propose constructive solutions rather than stopping these laws.
Times have changed and the old sentiments are different back then and now. Those saying the phrase to respect the voice of the people are using it for selfish reasons as my family and I do not prescribe to their action and I really do not want less than a majority of the population making statements that reflects the will of the people.
Maggie S. Mendiola
Chalan Kiya, Saipan
