PTI, MPLA may soon resume talks

Nearly 50 days after renewed talks between Pacific Telecom, Inc. and the Marianas Public Lands Authority bogged down, both camps have indicated that they are ready to go back to the negotiating table.

PTI general manager Tony Mosley said Friday that he would contact the MPLA this week to call for the resumption of the negotiations. “We’re ready to get it done,” Mosley said.

MPLA’s attorney, meanwhile, said the agency remains open to negotiations with PTI regarding its demand for payment of some $2.1 million for easement fees pertaining to the telecom firm’s cables buried under public lands.

“Of course, we’re not ruling out any possibility. We always believe that settlement is better than negotiations,” Quichocho said.

He said he would sit down with MPLA commissioner Edward DeLeon Guerrero and board member Nicolas Nekai, the head of the board’s resources and development committee, about how much the agency could accept as a settlement offer from PTI, if any.

“We’ll figure [that] out during the negotiations,” Quichocho said. “We’re open to a reasonable offer.”

Talks between the government agency and the telecom company had earlier failed, but Gov. Juan N. Babauta disclosed before PTI’s employees last Oct. 20 that he had urged the MPLA to get back to the negotiating table following the workers’ clamor for his intervention. Renewed talks bogged down last Oct. 27.

The MPLA and its board sued PTI and Verizon’s owner, Micronesian Telecommunications Corp., at the Superior Court for alleged breach of public land leases and for alleged improper use of public lands easement in burying their cables without paying the agency some easement fees. The MPLA filed the suit in early October after the companies disputed its demand for payment of some $2.1 million related to the easement fees—less than a month after PTI purchased all of MTC’s common stocks for approximately $60 million.

The governor intervened upon the request of PTI employees, who trooped to his office and asked that political “vendetta” be stopped against their employer, fearing for the loss of their jobs. The workers also urged the governor to intervene in the MPLA-PTI dispute.

Renewed talks had just begun when they were stalled again last Oct. 27, when the MPLA’s Quichocho allegedly raised his voice at former CNMI Chief Justice Jose Dela Cruz, a PTI board member. In turn, Quichocho alleged that he and Dela Cruz raised their voices against each other after the former chief justice yelled at him, accusing the latter of intimidation.

On Nov. 2, PTI and MTC sought the transfer of the MPLA’s lawsuit against them from the CNMI court to Saipan’s federal court, alleging that the agency’s causes of action were based on claims that infringe upon the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

MTC and PTI filed with the federal court a notice of removal, saying that MTC is a duly franchised CNMI telecommunications local exchange carrier subject to the provisions of the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996. The companies also accused the MPLA of engaging in discriminatory practices, particularly in the agency’s bid to impose certain public land lease and easement requirements.

PTI and MTC want MPLA to withdraw its lawsuit and go back to the negotiating table, even though they maintain that retroactively imposing easement fees on the telecom firm for use of right-of-way on public lands to bury telecom cables underground was improper.