Lawmakers insist on accountability on COVID-19 funds

Members of the House Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster Related Funding discuss during a meeting last Thursday the need for transparency and accountability for all the federal funding that are coming into the CNMI for its COVID-19 response. (Iva Maurin)

The House of Representatives Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster Related Funding demands transparency and accountability for the millions in federal funds that are coming into the Commonwealth.

At a Thursday meeting at the House, the five-member committee talked about an upcoming meeting with Patrick Guerrero, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres’ authorized representative. Rep. Joseph Lee Pan Guerrero (R-Saipan) stressed the need for accountability.

“We want accountability. People are screaming at us about accountability, and this is money that must be applied according to the respective requirement by the feds. We need to be mindful that we are going to be explaining ourselves to the community if this money is squandered or wasted,” he said.

“We’ve seen [Typhoon] Soudelour. We’ve seen [Typhoon] Mangkhut. We’ve seen [Super Typhoon] Yutu and up to now those remain questionable as to expenditure. With this COVID, we need to make sure that it does not repeat itself,” Guerrero added.

The lawmakers are looking into being briefed about the COVID-19 operations in place, as well as to being provided with information on three major categories: the issue of hazard pay and overtime, the contracts that have been awarded to date related to the COVID-19 response, and the accounting of all the sources of funds for the COVID-19 response.

At the meeting, Rep. Tina Sablan (Ind-Saipan) wanted the listing of all the contracts the CNMI has entered into for its COVID-19 response, and for what purposes and whether those contracts were competitively bid, sole-sourced, procured through emergency rules, and if they were sole-sourced or procured under the emergency regulations, to be provided with justification.

“I would suggest that we include any funds that we may or may not have received from [the] IPI community benefit fund, whether that’s being used, or if the intention is to use that as part of the local match,” Sablan added.

Committee chair Rep. Ralph Yumul (R-Saipan) explained in a separate interview that the committee is concerned about the local matching of the federal assistance.

“There are procurement rules for [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and agencies in the U.S. that grant us funding, so in the past we’ve learned from the disasters, Yutu, a lot of the expenditures were not approved or were kicked back to the CNMI government and that forces us to use our own funds and that’s why we’re in this predicament,” Yumul said. “Anything that has to do with what we’re going to spend on the general fund, we need to be accountable for it, so that’s something that we’re going to look into.”

Yumul said that lawmakers want the administration of the funding to be very transparent to people.