KUMOI TO TINIAN, ROTA SENATORS: Give up $60K allowance

Keeping his tight watch on his colleagues’ expenditures, Sen. Ramon S. Guerrero yesterday prodded senators from Rota and Tinian to give up the $60,000 subsistence allowance each of them receives annually for holding office on Saipan.

He said that such funding, although approved by the full body in a Senate resolution, should be presented before the public to allow them to decide whether it is necessary.

Scrapping the allowance could help the government cut costs, providing additional resources to critical programs like education and health, Mr. Guerrero wrote in a four-page letter to Senate President Paul A. Manglona.

“What is legal under the standing rules of the Senate… does not necessarily mean that we are doing the right thing,” he said. “Do we really need an annual fee of $60,000 for effective representation by [Rota and Tinian] members?… I will ask the questions because we need to answer the outcry of the public.”

The Saipan senator, who took office after winning over incumbent Sen. Juan P. Tenorio in the last November elections as candidate of the Reform Party, said a hearing should be conducted to gather public views on the matter.

“It is appalling to the public who can have access to these [expenditure] documents, if any of the members of the Senate cannot justify the public good,” added Mr. Guerrero.

He appealed to Mr. Manglona to “clean our acts and return the power of government to the people that elected us into office. I would like to see the each of us put reasonable and acceptable accounting” of the funds.

His request to the Senate leader came three weeks after he asked the Office of Public Auditor to investigate his colleagues’ expenditures, some of which he claimed are questionable since taxpayers’ dollars have been spent without benefiting the community.

Most of the senators who are the target of the financial disclosure have denied charges that they have improperly used public funds for their activities as they dismissed the investigation as politically motivated.

Mr. Guerrero again reiterated his commitment to expose irregularities in the use of public funds, saying that it’s up to the senators on how to deal with him while trying to represent the interest of the people who elected him into office.

“I may have invaded and stepped on the personal boundaries and sacred zone… but it is to be expected because that was the calculated risk and this situation comes with the territory,” he wrote in the letter.

Meanwhile, Sen. Joaquin G. Adriano said he is still pushing a planned oversight on Mr. Guerrero in connection with the alleged $250,000 overpayment made to him during his tenure as CUC executive director.

The Committee on Executive Appointments and Governmental Investigations which he chairs is expected to meet later this week to discuss the plan.

The OPA status report on the 1995 audit concerning the alleged overpayment will be the basis of the oversight to find out why the Attorney General’s Office and the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. have yet to pursue the case, according to the Tinian senator.

Mr. Guerrero has denied receiving overpayment, saying whatever he got when he left CUC were all approved by its board.