"Public purpose" revisited

Former Finance Secretary Antonio R. Cabrera has found himself in some hot water recently. The Teno administration has charged him with making improper personal expenditures during former Governor Froilan C. Tenorio’s term in office. They claim he spent public money on suits, cigars, shoes, ice cream, donuts, entertainment, and the like. Now the Teno administration is trying to force Mr. Cabrera to pay some of it back–as much as $75,000 of it back, in fact.

Now the first question is: Did Mr. Cabrera do anything that was morally wrong? That is to say, did he act improperly in connection with any of these suspect expenditures?

And the second question is: Did he do anything that was blatantly illegal? Did he break the law by incurring some of these expenses?

Let us leave the moral question aside for now and focus on the legal issue first. To determine whether Mr. Cabrera did anything illegal, we have to look at two things: the facts and the law.

First, in regards to the facts, we have to ask, “Did Mr. Cabrera–did he in fact–spend government money on shoes, cigars, donuts, ice cream, and other assorted items for himself and others?” Did he overspend on personal items? Did he use government (taxpayer) money for personal purposes? Did he do any of these things?

And second, in regards to the law, we need to know if there is anything in the CNMI constitution (or in statutory law or regulation) that specifically prohibits Mr. Cabrera from incurring such government-paid expenses.

With respect to the facts, Mr. Cabrera has not denied that he incurred these expenses. The government still has the receipts to prove that he did in fact incur some of these government expenses. There is no question about the facts of this case.

Cabrera did in fact buy ice cream and donuts with government money. He certainly hasn’t issued any categorical denials to the contrary.

Now the question is, “Was any of this spending illegal?” What does the law have to say about it?

Well, the CNMI Constitution (Article X, Section 1) says that “A tax may not be levied and an appropriation of public money may not be made, directly or indirectly, except for a public purpose. The legislature shall provide the definition of public purpose.”

OK, so the next question is: “So what’s a public purpose?” Mr. Cabrera doesn’t know. He had no official working definition at the time. It was not his job to define “public purpose.” That’s the legislature’s job. They didn’t do it during Froilan’s term, and I believe they still haven’t done it.

For all Mr. Cabrera knew, “public purpose” could mean anything from giving me money to buy ladies drinks to providing tents for funerals. It could also mean providing grant money for CNMI college students or paying for then Lt. Governor Jesse Borja’s utility and long distance telephone bills (all of it) at his former government residence on Capitol Hill. How was Mr. Cabrera to know that “public purpose” did not include buying ice cream and donuts for himself and his fellow government employees? Nobody told him. The law didn’t exactly say.

Now in regards to the moral question, let me just paraphrase our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: he who has never taken a single penny out of the government’s coffers–let him be the one to cast the first stone against Mr. Cabrera.