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House to introduce ‘education bill’
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Posted on Jun 21 2005
The House Ways and Means Committee is inclined to introduce a bill that appropriates funding for three agencies: Public School System, Northern Marianas College, and the CNMI Scholarship Office.
Rep. Norman S. Palacios, chair of the committee, said yesterday that, instead of offering a piecemeal budget for PSS alone, his panel saw it fit to include the two other agencies.
“We will have an education appropriation bill covering these three offices,” said Palacios.
House members earlier expressed support to granting the PSS its entire budget request of $50 million.
House Education Committee chair Justo S. Quitugua said his office has drafted a separate PSS budget for FY 2006.
PSS officials have been lobbying both the Legislature and the Executive Branch for a new budget next fiscal year.
PSS currently receives $37.2 million a year.
NMC, meantime, which also lobbied the Legislature for its own funding, is requesting $10 million from the Legislature.
The community college uses its annual appropriation for personnel. It sources its operations funding of about $2.5 million from tuition and fees,
Palacios said he is reviewing the funding for the Scholarship Office.
Recently, Palacios committee agreed to endorse a $206 million general appropriation for FY 2006.
“It’s the figure that we’ve identified based on the existing resources. We’re still drafting the concurrent resolution for introduction,” he said.
The Babauta administration earlier submitted a $225.8 million proposed budget for FY 2006. The proposal contains a $19-million package of proposed revenue generating measures. These include a $6,000 poker fee increase and diversion of local poker fee funds and Tobacco Control and Tobacco Settlement Funds to the General Fund.
The administration acknowledged earlier that without these proposed measures, the government could only generate $206 million in FY 2006 in view of the projected decline in revenues from the garment sector.
