Saipan Tribune

Friday, May 24, 2013

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

DCCA, DPS reorganization on the drawing board-Inos

TINIAN-Gov. Eloy S. Inos said yesterday that there will be further reorganization at the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, along with the Department of Public Safety, in addition to his earlier disclosure of plans to transfer the operation and management of the Oleai Sports Complex from DCCA to an entity such as the Northern Marianas Amateur Sports Association.

“There will be more,” Inos told reporters after the public swearing-in of Lt. Gov. Jude U. Hofschneider at the Tinian Courthouse.

For example, there will be consolidation of some activities between DCCA and the Indigenous Affairs Office.

However, there have been some issues with the Historic Preservation Office over federal grant recipient and grantor relationship, he said.

“Maybe outside of that we might be able to move some of the things. .We are going to look at DPS also and maybe we can spin off some of the ongoing activities to other areas but we need to sit down with the new commissioner and discuss those areas because being a new commissioner I'm sure he's got his own ideas as well so we need to get his input,” Inos added.

The Inos administration is revisiting the recommendations of an independent firm that did a desk audit on DCCA and DPS in 2010.

The Virginia-based Management Analysis Inc. had determined that DCCA and DPS are each overstaffed and have employees with overlapping functions.

MAI had also recommended renaming DCCA to Department of Human Services so it would be more focused in its mission of providing services.

It recommended moving the functions of DCCA's Division of Sports and Recreation to the Northern Marianas Amateur Sports Association, which the Inos administration said on Monday it could implement in the current fiscal year instead of waiting for fiscal year 2014.

MAI also recommended the following: Moving DCCA’s Juvenile Detention Facility to the Department of Corrections; moving DCCA’s Juvenile Probation Unit to the Superior Court; and moving DCCA’s other divisions-including the Chamorro/Carolinian Language Policy Commission, the Commonwealth Council for Arts and Culture, and the Historic Preservation Office-under the Office of the Resident Director for Indigenous Affairs. The latter would create a department that preserves history, culture, and festivals.

As of yesterday, there's no telling whether any of these additional recommendations will be considered.

So far, the specific plans that Inos shared is privatizing parks maintenance and merging the Department of Labor and Workforce Investment Agency.

Inos said yesterday that his administration does not want a massive reorganization all at once.

“We have to be very careful with these things. We want to make sure what we set out to do is something that works out. .We still have time to look at some of these low-hanging fruit type of activities.we just need to move them from public service to private services,” he added.

Lt. Gov. Jude U. Hofschneider, in a separate interview, said he and the governor continue to review the performance reports submitted by agencies and these reports will help them in making decisions to “right-size” the government while providing needed public service.

“If not constitutionally prohibited, we will look at the Affairs Office.Some agencies like Division of Parks and Recreation, DCCA, Mayor's Office and the Marianas Visitors Authority, they have some duplicate functions, sometimes they do the same thing,” he added.

As to former governor Froilan Tenorio's call on the Inos administration to show it is different, Inos had this to say: “We do what we need to do to make a difference to improve the lives of the people. We are not going to be different just for the sake of being different. We will do what we feel we need to do and hopefully in the process, if that translates to a different approach, so be it.”