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On proposed municipal wage bill
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Posted on Oct 17 2006
The announcement of Thursday nights’ public hearing on Tinian regarding the salaries of municipal government employees provides a unique learning opportunity for the public, and perhaps the central leadership itself. It will certainly lend itself easily for teachers to create lesson plans for CNMI “Civics and Government” at the high school level and “Fundamentals of American Government” at the college. Most certainly, it provides the Fourth Estate, the media, with an opportunity to help create better informed voters for next year’s mid-term elections.
Some suggestions for the author of the bill: For the people of Tinian to comment constructively on the House bill, it would be helpful if he or she would supply the people of Tinian with certain basic information now, before the hearing.
First, what problem caused the author to create this bill? How does the bill define municipal government and municipal employees? There is no reason to get people all riled up, if it doesn’t apply to them.
Does the bill apply to civil service employees, or exempted service employees; political hires, or both?
How much money are we talking about when we talk about the municipal government? How many employees are there in the three different senatorial districts? How many are civil service employees and how many are exempted service employees are employed on each of the three islands? Does it apply to the Northern Islands?
Where can the people of Tinian pick up a copy of the bill to read before the hearing?
The point is, for the public hearing to be of real value it is important to publish the substance of the bill before calling the public hearing. Otherwise, either nobody will show up and it is a waste of money, or nobody shows up and the legislature passes the bill without public comment, or the wrong people show up and cause delays, or the right people won’t know about it and won’t show up, or nobody has the time to prepare a written testimony if they wish?
Thank you for publishing this, and I do hope that the media and the community will use this opportunity to become better informed voters.
[B]Don A. Farrell [/B] [I]Marpo Heights, Tinian[/I]
