House rejects Senate’s version of House bill on legislative appropriation

The House of Representatives rejected on Thursday the Senate version of a House legislation that would require legislative appropriation for all non-locally-sourced funds allocated for the CNMI.

All 17 House members present at a session voted in affirmative to a motion to reject H.B. Number 23-9, House Substitute 1, Senate Draft 1.

House Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) said with the rejection, he will go ahead and bring this to a conference committee as well.

Villagomez said he will be forming the conference committee at a later time.

A conference committee will hammer out Senate and House differences on the legislation.

Before the voting, Rep. Denita K. Yangetmai (D-Saipan), who is the principal author of the bill, said they are rejecting the Senate amendments for the mere reason that the reimbursements are not new funds that need to be re- appropriated.

Rep. Blas Jonathan T. Attao (Ind-Saipan) said essentially what Yangetmai was saying that a lot of these federal funds are used for disasters.

Attao said the government uses general fund monies to address disaster expenditures therefore it’s kind of eating CNMI coffers.

He said when the Federal Emergency Management Agency or any other federal agency remits the money back to the CNMI, the government is just putting it back to the general fund.

Attao said what this Senate amendment does is it’s double taxing the general fund.

“So it’s saying that we have $100,000 from the feds, they’re counting it as $200,000. Well, it’s not $200,000 only 100,000 is taken from the general fund,” he said.

Attao said the government is paying back the general fund so

that money makes the general fund back as a whole.

He said then the other portion that the Senate added was the retroactive provisions.

“We also already know that under the Planning and Budgeting Act, it’s only within the fiscal year, there’s no beyond fiscal year expenditures, there’s no continuing resolution. And in the retroactive portion, we’re paying something that’s non- existent through the Planning of Budgeting Act,” he said.