Oscar C. Camacho, acting chief executive officer for the Commonwealth Development Authority, praised lawmakers for their help in requiring the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to resolve the outstanding debt it owes the agency. <\/p>\n
Public Law 16-17 requires CUC to resolve the longstanding debt owed to CDA. The utility agency owes CDA $177.5 million in principal and interest. <\/p>\n
The law states that CUC can issue stock in the amount of $45 million to CDA to write off the debt.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Legislature helped us and assisted us in such a big way,\u201d Camacho said. <\/p>\n
The two agencies have had legal disputes in the past over the debt. <\/p>\n
CUC and the Public Utilities Commission have placed the debt as a priority. By Jan. 16, 2009, CUC must petition the PUC for approval of the stock transaction. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven if CDA doesn\u2019t do anything, CUC has to make it happen,\u201d Camacho said. \u201cCUC has to make that preferred stock [transaction happen]. In my opinion they have to sign and not subordinate CDA\u2019s interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
During a public hearing earlier this month, consultants hired by PUC said once CUC resolved its debt to CDA the utility agency would go from insolvency to solvency overnight. <\/p>\n
Camacho said that during that hearing he spoke with some of the legislators at the meeting, thanking them for their support of CDA. <\/p>\n
\u201cI said thank you. Thank you for standing pat,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
However, there have been some snags in the settlement. <\/p>\n
CDA legal counsel Ben Santos disclosed during a board of directors meeting that CUC\u2019s legal counsel has concerns about some of the transaction requirements. <\/p>\n
According to Santos, CUC has concerns about the preferred stock having priority over CUC\u2019s other creditors. The CDA board of directors wanted the provision in case the utility company acquired loans and extended its assets for security, making CDA subservient, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very important that CDA has priority over other creditors and CDA has a major say-so on those items,\u201d Santos said.<\/p>\n
Santos was planning on continuing discussions with CUC in order to reach an agreement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oscar C. Camacho, acting chief executive officer for the Commonwealth Development Authority, praised lawmakers for their help in requiring the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to resolve the outstanding debt it owes the agency. <\/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-129090","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\/129090","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=129090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}