House passes FY25 budget without revision

The House of Representatives has passed its version of the fiscal year 2025 budget without revisions.

In a statement from Rep. Ralph Yumul (Ind-Saipan), he said the House of Representatives has passed its version of the FY 2025 budget without revisions to the budget proposed by the Office of the Governor last July 1. Currently, the House awaits the Senate’s version.

“As of date we don’t have a revised budget. We passed our version and so we are waiting for the Senate’s version,” he said.

In a statement from Senate President Edith Deleon Guerrero (D-Saipan), she said the Senate’s Fiscal Affairs Committee has passed the House’s version of the budget with Senate revisions and will bring the revised budget before the Senate body for approval in its upcoming Senate Session on Sept. 18.

“Our Senate session will be on Sept 18 to include this FY25 HCR as Senate the version. If the House rejects our Senate version, we will go into a conference committee,” she said.

Over the past few months, government agencies and branches have voiced their concerns about the fiscal year 2025 budget.

One of the biggest concerns raised was from the Judiciary who expressed that closure may be underway should their FY25 budget request of $14.8 not be met.

According to the Judiciary’s budget request, it needs $14.8 million to continue its operations. However, according to the Office of the Governor’s revised budget proposal, it is proposing a budget of $5.3 million for FY2025

Chief Justice Alexandro C. Castro informed the House Standing Committee on Ways and Means last July that due to the over $9-million cut, whether the CNMI’s court doors remain open is uncertain.

Castro expressed that the NMI Judiciary has done its constitutional duty to submit a budget that reflects the needs of the courts, and the Office of the Governor is just doing its constitutional duty to proportionally appropriate the funds available.

“Our constitution requires me to submit a budget that accurately reflects the needs of the courts on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. To do this, we asked all division in judiciary to submit their needs for FY2025. An in-house committee of the Judiciary went through these submissions and there after Presiding Judge Roberto Naraja and I submitted the budget now before you. Some of my staff and maybe some judges were not very happy of the submission because we did not incorporate every request. Had we considered all requests, from Rota, Tinian, and Saipan, our request would be more than $15 million now before you. The Executive Branch has fulfilled its constitutional duty by trying to proportionately allocate available funds. It is now before you, the Legislative Branch, to carefully examine whether the Judiciary has justified our FY2025 budget submission,” he said.

Yumul, House Ways and Means committee chair, expressed that he is in support of the court’s request but it’s difficult to move funds around especially since all branches of government will be experiencing a 10% cut.

“The two branches don’t control the funds. Whatever is handed to us is all we have. I want to make that clear because a lot of the time our community blames this body for the proposal the administration sends us. I want to make it clear that we are in support of the court’s submission, but based on the amount given to us, the administration is asking both branches for an additional 10% cut and that makes it even more difficult for us to move funds around,” he said.

Based on the governor’s revised budget proposal, the administration has $111,474,011 to appropriate after its obligations.