Lackluster performance

The recent news about the lackluster performance by Tinian’s incumbent elected leadership on the completion of the Tinian International Airport has been eye-opening, to say the least. Followed by today’s revelation that the total anticipated gaming revenues for the Tinian Municipal Fund are expected to fall to $3.2 million from a high of $5.7 million, the people of Tinian are finally learning the truth about the island’s total lack of progress.

It has been previously reported that the Mayor of Tinian has been incapable of producing an accounting of the $10 million his administration has expended from the Tinian Municipal Fund for the two and one half years he has been in office. It has also been previously reported that there is apparently no intention on the part of the Tinian Legislative Delegation or the Tinian Municipal Council to do anything about it. This is not surprising, considering that the Mayor of Tinian controls the Tinian Covenant Party and the Tinian Legislative Delegation as well as the Tinian Municipal Council are controlled by the Tinian Covenant Party.

The residents of Tinian, who are still holding onto business plans in anticipation of regularly scheduled international flights arriving at the Tinian West Field International Airport, now know they can put them back in the closet for at least the next year and a half. That is the minimum time necessary to construct the fuel farm, which we now know hasn’t even been looked at. Point is, the people of Tinian can anticipate that no regularly scheduled jet aircraft full of tourists will land on Tinian by the end of this administration. Revenues may continue to decline. We can only hope that the Dynasty can survive until new leadership takes control.

If I may be so bold as to suggest to my friends on Rota, there are some serious lessons to be learned from the gross mistakes made by the current elected Tinian leadership. In order to protect the people, to whom the Municipal Fund belongs, it is imperative that the municipality has an independent Municipal Public Auditor, distinctly separate from the Mayor’s office. The Municipal Treasurer must submit monthly itemized expenditure reports to the Public Auditor, or face serious sanctions. The Municipal Public Auditor must balance the mayor’s accounts and make the findings public within 30 days. This will ensure that the mayor cannot expend funds on frivolous vote-buying schemes.

The local budget must be submitted by the mayor to the Municipal Council in a timely fashion, just as the governor is supposed to submit a budget to the CNMI House of Representatives. The Municipal Council is then responsible for holding adequate public hearings, finalizing the budget, and submitting it to the Legislative Delegation for appropriation. If the Mayor cannot submit a budget within the timeframe established by the Municipal Charter, then the Municipal Council becomes responsible for creating a budget. This then requires that the Municipal Council must be clearly separated from the political arena. A Municipal Council member cannot be employed in any way by any political office.

Finally, there must be no continuation clause in the budget. If the budget is not signed by the beginning of the succeeding fiscal year, then there can be no expenditures from the fund until one is passed, and there will be no retroactive salaries paid to elected officials for the time there is no budget.

For the history of Tinian, the legacy of the Covenant Party looks bleak. Two and one half years ago, the Covenant Party swept the Tinian island elections. Jose P. San Nicolas, owner of Tinian’s inter-island shipping monopoly, became Mayor of Tinian. His son became chairman of the Tinian Legislative Delegation. Freshman Sen. Joseph Mendiola was catapulted to the presidency of the Senate. The mayor hired the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Ports Authority to be his financial adviser. With the leader of the Covenant Party sitting in the governor’s chair, and the chairman of the CPA board sitting at their right hand, the Tinian elected leadership had a unique opportunity to force the complete development of the Tinian International Airport. Instead, they invested in travel and vote-buying schemes. By the end of their first two years in office, they were only able to produce a letter to DOI, requesting the re-appropriation of CIP funds to support the airport’s development. Now, six months after DOI approved the re-appropriation, Ms. Desposa has exposed that the Tinian elected leadership has completely dropped the ball on both the ILS and the fuel farm.

The people of Tinian are no closer to their dream of economic prosperity today than they were two years ago. The sad part of it is that if they had focused on completing the airport development at the beginning of their administration, jet aircraft would already be landing on Tinian, the Tinian Municipal Fund would be growing and private sector jobs would be available. With the Dynasty Hotel full and the Bridge Investment Group in full swing, not only would the people of Tinian benefit, but also needed revenues would be generated for the CNMI general fund. Instead, the people that the mayor, the delegation and the council have hired are facing a dubious future and revenues to the general fund are declining. Instead of being in a win-win situation, the Tinian elected leadership has put the island into a lose-lose mode.

The most frustrating part of this entire scenario is that the first ray of hope for Tinian is still 18 months away.