Rep. Stanley T. Torres insisted yesterday that he should be provided the services of a private counsel in his lawsuit against Gov. Benigno R. Fitial.<\/p>\n
Torres said in a letter to House Speaker Oscar M. Babauta that several other lawmakers support his petition to the Superior Court for a declaratory judgment on the governor\u2019s reduction of legislative budgets beyond 7.1 percent.<\/p>\n
This comes in response to Babauta\u2019s reported statement that Torres\u2019 petition was self-initiated and did not have the support of the Legislature.<\/p>\n
Torres referred to a proposed Senate resolution commending him for asking the court to clarify whether the governor\u2019s state of disaster emergency for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is legal.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepresentative Torres\u2019 petition is not only about the proper restoration of legislative funds, but it is also about the enforcement of the checks and balances of our government to prevent our government employees from suffering due to Executive Branch mismanagement,\u201d reads a portion of Senate Resolution 15-13.<\/p>\n
Introduced by Sen. Luis Crisostimo, the resolution 15-13 is currently pending before a Senate committee.<\/p>\n
Torres said the resolution was sent to committee \u201cfor purposes of presumably making it stronger so that the petition may be properly adjudicated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGranted the governor is trying his best to improperly use the \u2018emergency powers\u2019 section of the CNMI Constitution and the Disaster Relief Act of 1979, but I believe it\u2019s in the best interests of the separation of three branches of CNMI government to have this matter properly heard, clarified and adjudicated by the court,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rep. Stanley T. Torres insisted yesterday that he should be provided the services of a private counsel in his lawsuit against Gov. Benigno R. Fitial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}