The FY 2000 Budget

At Issue: Earmarking of 75 percent of annual budget for salaries of nearly 5,000 public sector employees.

Our View: Isn’t it time that a greater portion of the package is earmarked for meaningful community programs?

The notion of earmarking some 75 percent of any fiscal year’s budget strictly for salaries of about 5,000 public sector employees goes to illustrate the inability of local leaders to bite the bullet of reducing cost in favor of more meaningful programs.

This seemingly time-honored forte perpetuates the well nurtured notion of “Big Brother” showing up for last minute rescue missions, i.e., dishing out unearned mandated wages and perks. It is this very policy upon which we allow complacency to come to full bloom even during a severe financial drought. It is this generously
warped policy that gives employees wrongful confidence that one need not acquire nor develop lifetime skills. Thus, we find most of the indigenous people in the public sector.

It is this policy that is seemingly the culprit that fans indigenous failure of to detrimentally rely on the Big Brother Syndrome. Thus, our collective efforts to encourage the acquisition of lifetime skills simply turn into an exercise in futility. It seems too that we have never come to terms with the proverbial first step in the long journey to success. Most refuse to take the first step what with the seeming notion that the indigenous people is the “royal class” that must constantly be spoon-fed with hard earned taxes from the productive sector of the NMI community.

If anything, this policy is the very culprit that requires major reform. Such reform needs bold resolve to cut down non-essential staff in top-heavy government departments and agencies. It is really an eye-opener that some $158 million out of the total $211 million for FY 2000 is earmarked for salaries alone. How many more employees do we need in an already bloated bureaucracy?

Reform should include the privatization of functions that compete with the private sector. This is where the test of leadership comes into full view. Could we see some hands, please? Or is it too tough an issue to deal with because we have turned milking taxpayers into an art?

Like the privatization of the old TTG telephone service (now Micronesian TeleCommunications), such should also be done with the government utility agency. It should result in humongous savings in public funds that could be earmarked for meaningful programs and better quality delivery of essential public services.

Friends, if we can’t institute difficult but lasting decisions to protect the financial posture of a now deficit-ridden local government, then we should also be prepared to meet the enemy. In the instant case, we have found the enemy and the Enemy Is Us!