Sen. Maria T. Pangelinan has lamented the lack of cooperation from government agencies with the budget process.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Fiscal Affairs, said many agencies are unresponsive to her committee\u2019s calls for specific information on their budget requests.<\/p>\n
She said that personnel costs in particular require a closer look, given that over two thirds of the government\u2019s budget will go to payroll. Personnel costs are expected to comprise $105 million of the government\u2019s $156.7 million budget for the 2009 fiscal year.<\/p>\n
That is why, she said, lawmakers need department heads to justify their requests for full-time employees and their compensation plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey cannot even respond to a simple request to confirm the positions in their department. How could they expect us to think they can run a department? It\u2019s all very frustrating,\u201d said Pangelinan.<\/p>\n
The new fiscal year is coming in less than one month. To date, the Legislature and the administration have not passed a new budget.<\/p>\n
The Legislature and administration are now looking at a resource level of $156.7 million, a decrease of $1.7 million from the original revenue projection for the 2009 fiscal year.<\/p>\n
The new estimate factors in the $1.7 million income from the Marianas Public Land Trust which has been earmarked for the payment of debts owed by the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.<\/p>\n
The updated revenue forecast is reflected in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives last week. The resolution, once adopted, will set the government spending limit for the period between Oct. 1, 2008 and Sept. 30, 2009.<\/p>\n
No appropriation was passed for fiscal year 2008. The government is currently operating on the FY2007 budget level of $163 million, a figure largely believed to be more than the available resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Maria T. Pangelinan has lamented the lack of cooperation from government agencies with the budget process.<\/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-125998","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\/125998","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=125998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}