FLASHBACK December 12, 2000-2002

Bicameral meeting eyed to seal pact on budget[/B]

The House and the Senate are set to go into bicameral conference on Thursday to begin hammering out an agreement on the much-delayed budget that will oil operations of the government for the next 10 months. The joint meeting will be held in the Legislature building on Saipan, ditching a request from the Senate to conduct the proceeding on Rota. Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Antonio M. Camacho declined to comment when asked what the lower house intends to lay down on the negotiating table when they meet with their Senate counterparts.

Chief Public Defender Masood Karimipour was vindicated yesterday from allegations that he violated terms in his employment contract after a thorough investigation conducted by the Office of the Public Auditor revealed no evidence that he used company time and state-owned resources to engage in private activities. The public defender, however, asserted that while he has been cleared of allegations hurled against him, his accusers should not be permitted to run free after attempting to destroy his reputation through innuendo and rumors. “What still remains unresolved is the issue of how the Attorney General’s Office, an agency that is supported by taxpayers money, can abuse the power of their office in engaging in petty and personal attacks and maliciously throwing mud at innocent individuals,” he said.

Dust worries Tanapag residents [/B]

Tanapag Action Group Chair Juan Tenorio vowed to raise a barrage of complaints before federal government representatives once they face each other today in a scheduled meeting at the Division of Environmental Quality. Tenorio said the indirect thermal desorption machine, which has been put up by the contractor of the Army Corps of Engineers to treat some 20,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil, has been emitting a huge amount of dust enough to cover the tall pine trees nearby. “The dust is very bad coming from the machine,” Tenorio said.

The US Department of Justice has called for the immediate reassessment of all garment factories in the Northern Marianas following devious information earlier released on the alleged garment workers’ use of drugs. US-DOJ National Drug Intelligence Center Director Michael T. Horn apologized to the Saipan Garment Manufacturing Association for his agency’s irresponsible reporting, which alleged that garment workers on Saipan use drugs to increase their productivity. In a letter to SGMA executive director Richard A. Pierce, Horn admitted that the agency failed to substantiate the allegation and the agency regrets having it printed without proper verification.

FEMA flies to Rota, Agrihan residents said trapped[/B]

Representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were to conduct a preliminary damage assessment on Rota by helicopter yesterday, as the CNMI government remains expectant of a major disaster declaration by President Bush. With authorities projecting power restoration on the island to take several weeks or longer, hopes remained high that Bush would act swiftly on the CNMI’s request for disaster declaration, so that federal funding could immediately be made available to rehabilitate Rota. “The request is on the President’s desk for his review,” said CNMI Press Secretary Pete Callaghan, saying he was told of this yesterday afternoon by FEMA’s regional office headquartered in Oakland, California.

Revenues collected by the CNMI Department of Finance for the Commonwealth government jumped more than 10 percent in the third quarter of the fiscal year 2002, in comparison with the previous three-month period’s tally. A report prepared by the Central Statistics Division of the Department of Commerce indicated that taxes and fees collected by the finance department during the period under review totaled $50.3 million, up from the $45.57 million in the previous quarter. Compared with the figure reported in the third quarter of last financial year, however, this year’s third quarter collection was lower by more than 16 percent. The finance department collected about $60 million during the same period last fiscal year.