House wants new priority in govt’s pension payments

The House of Representatives has passed a bill requiring the CNMI government to prioritize and pay the pension contributions of employees who are eligible to retire.

The bill passed by a 17-1 vote, with Rep. Tina Sablan opposing the measure. Rep. Joseph Reyes, a former chairman of the NMI Retirement Fund’s board of trustees, abstained. House Floor Leader Joseph James Camacho was absent.

The measure, now headed to the Senate for its action, is designed to help eligible employees who have not been able to retire because the NMI Retirement Fund had stopped processing retirement applications of members with deficient contributions.

Proponents of the bill say that employees should not be penalized or denied their retirement because of the government’s inability to contribute to the pension program.

“I feel and I believe that it is just not right for our employees to be mandated to pay for employees’ contribution for 20 years with the promise that they can retire upon this 20 years of service, and after meeting that eligibility, they are being told that they can’t retire because the government cannot pay its employer contribution. This is not the way to reward our government employees who has served our government for 20 years or more,” said Rep. Ralph Torres, sponsor of the bill.

Sablan, the only one to vote against the bill, said she originally considered supporting the bill, but changed her mind after Rep. Joseph Deleon Guerrero raised deep concerns about the impact that the bill would have on individual agencies’ budgets.

She said, “He [Deleon Guerrero] gave the example of one individual he knew of whose deficient employer contributions totaled $230,000. Mandating that that deficient contribution be paid for in its entirety above all other expenses would cripple that agency.

“And he also argued that it would be better to approach the problem more comprehensively and suggested that the approach suggested in the joint conference budget bill—pooling all the Retirement Fund contributions from the central government—would be more workable and that deficiencies in employer contributions should rightly be addressed in the appropriations bill. I thought Joe’s argument was the most persuasive.”

Despite these concerns, Deleon Guerrero voted in favor of the bill.