Sprint to pass FY 2018 budget begins

With a little over two months left in the fiscal year calendar, the sprint has begun for the Legislature to get the fiscal year 2018 budget to its Sept. 30 finish line.

The House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee started deliberations on the fiscal year 2018 budget yesterday in an attempt to complete it by the end of the month. That will provide just 10 weeks for the Senate to hold its own deliberations on the bill and for Gov. Ralph DLG Torres to enact it into law.

The House committee was forced to stop deliberations yesterday after an overview of the under-allocated and over-allocated budget submissions in relation to Gov. Ralph DLG Torres’ budget proposal of $148 million.

“After reviewing all the requests of the departments and the governor’s proposal, our fiscal analyst reported to the committee today that it amounted to a total of $3 million in requests over the governor’s budget proposal,” said House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Angel Demapan (R-Saipan), adding that some agencies such as the Public School System, Judiciary, Department of Public Safety, and more were asked to submit their highest funding priorities so that secondary funding needs would be addressed through future supplemental appropriations.

In a perfect world where all the departments’ budget requests are granted, the total budget would amount to $151 million.

Although Demapan recognizes that all of the needs the government agencies asked for are important, only Torres has the power to outline added funds.

“We are working off what Torres is projecting,” he said, adding that the challenge is how to accommodate all the requests within Torres’ proposed budget.

According to Demapan, the goal of the House is to come up with a fiscal year 2018 budget by the end of next week to “… give the Senate time to go through our version and, in the end, give the governor his constitutional window of 20 days to review the budget.”

“The end goal is to act promptly so that we can ensure that there is no interruption of government services,” he said.

Demapan assured that the body would be focusing on the more critical areas such as education, healthcare, and law enforcement.

“We want to make sure that these services are prioritized because that is the driver of any government’s economy,” he said.

The House Ways and Means Committee would convene next Monday morning to start moving the budget around.

If no budget is passed by Sept. 30, the CNMI government could shut down.