Lobbyist refunds $30K to SGMA

The Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association stands to receive $30,000 as refund from the lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds for the services it rendered to the organization during the last half of the 1990s.

SGMA executive director Richard A. Pierce said Saturday that he had recently talked with Jonathan Blank, an attorney for Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, who told him of the refund.

“SGMA will receive $30,000, from an old PGERM escrow account, which was never applied to fees from the law firm,” Pierce said. “Mr. Blank has informed me that the check is now in the mail and on its way here.”

Pierce explained that the refund represent the deposit that SGMA had paid to the lobbying firm when it hired it to lobby for the group in Washington, D.C. The money was held in an escrow account and was never translated to fees.

Preston Gates & Ellis had also worked on behalf of the Northern Mariana Islands so it could keep its own immigration and labor status independent of federal rules during the 1990s. It was hired during the term of Gov. Froilan Tenorio.

An Office of the Public Auditor report released in November 2001 had questioned whether the CNMI got its money’s worth when it paid millions of dollars to the Seattle-based Preston Gates.

The OPA concluded the islands’ government broke its own laws when it paid Preston Gates just over $3 million from October 1996 to October 1997 after their contract had expired, and they questioned whether the islands got their money’s worth.

The reports recommended that the CNMI government further examine its contracting practices, and concluded that its agreement to do so largely resolved the audits.

The auditor also reported that while island government officials believed the lobbying work helped keep them free from new U.S. regulations, “it may be difficult to validate to what extent lobbyists were the reasons behind preserving the status quo.”

Another OPA audit concluded about $1.2 million in government payments to Preston Gates were “not adequately supported.” The charges included travel, telephone, photocopy, computer research and outside-professional fees. Auditors said Preston Gates also improperly billed the government $2,000 for a June 1996 golf tournament.

The audits showed that between October 1993 and September 2001 the Preston Gates firm reaped about $6.7 million from the CNMI government, about 72 percent of the government’s overall lobbying payments. (with Associated Press reports)