Compact money to be shared among agencies

Gov. Juan N. Babauta is now resolved to allocate some $5.2 million in Compact Impact funds among certain agencies after he tried but failed to convince the Department of the Interior to use the money as leverage to pay off the government’s debts.

“They [DOI] didn’t say ‘cannot’ but it would be difficult to justify under the law that implements the Compact Impact and even our Constitution to borrow money to pay off public debt and specially when the debt was incurred for the operations of the government,” he told reporters yesterday.

“We tried. We tried,” he added.

The governor earlier inquired with DOI deputy assistant secretary for insular affairs David B. Cohen whether the CNMI could use the funds to retire the government’s longstanding debt totaling some $101 million.

In an interview last June, Cohen had hinted that the CNMI’s request may not be possible.

“We have to examine the statute to see if that’s permissible. There may be problems. We will certainly consider it but it may not be possible,” he had said.

Babauta said yesterday that the Compact money will be shared among the Public School System, Department of Public Health, Public Safety, and Northern Marianas College.

“I need to figure out how…to distribute this funding but it’s my sense that the priorities lie with PSS, DPH, DPS, and NMC. These are the four entities that need most funding attention,” he said.

This developed as the Legislature adopted recently a joint resolution asking the governor to allocate the funds to PSS. It cited PSS reports that there are 516 students from freely associated states right now.

“PSS has shouldered annual impact costs of $5.615 million for these students,” the resolution said, adding that such projection includes operational costs, busing, and classrooms.

“It does not include the impact costs of additional personnel for non-teaching and teaching positions required at each school site,” said the resolution.

The CNMI expects to get over $5 million in Compact money this year and every year for the next 20 years.

The Compact legislation provides that $30 million will be divided each year for the next 20 years among the Northern Marianas, Guam, Hawaii and American Samoa to help these jurisdictions deal with the effects of migration from the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands, commonly known as the freely associated states.