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Piecemeal budget for PSS gains support
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Posted on Jun 18 2005
If the Legislature is unable to pass a new budget for the next fiscal year, Gov. Juan N. Babauta favors the passage of a piecemeal budget for the Public School System.
“If they want to go piecemeal, let PSS be the first and let everybody else gets the rest. Education is the priority of this administration,” said Babauta during a Cabinet meeting last Wednesday.
This came following doubts that the administration’s proposal to raise poker fees to generate revenues would pass the Legislature.
The administration submitted a $225.6 million proposed budget for FY 2006 but the House Ways and Means Committee members have agreed to endorse only $206 million as available resources for the next fiscal year. This excludes some $19 million worth of revenue enhancement programs, which include a $6,000 poker fee increase and diversion of local poker fees and tobacco funds to the General Fund.
The budget submission contained a $50-million budget request for PSS.
Rep. Justo Quitugua, chair of the House Education Committee, said he supports a piecemeal budget for PSS.
Quitugua said he has in fact prepared an initial draft to give PSS its $50 million budget request.
Rep. Ray Tebuteb said he also favors the enactment of a separate appropriation for PSS. “I support the administration’s request for the schools. I believe that they deserve to get this funding,” he said.
Meantime, governor senior policy advisor Bob Schwalbach said that lawmakers should be “pressured” by their constituents into passing the FY 2006 budget.
He also noted that other than the poker fee increase, the governor’s budget request “simply redistributes funds.”
“It’s not about raising fees. It’s more of redistribution of funds. We’re redistributing available funds—from [local] poker and tobacco funds,” he said, adding that “poker is doing great. They are all over the island. A $6,000 fee increase is not too much to ask for.”
