The Board of Regents unanimously adopted yesterday a resolution that expresses its strong opposition to a bill that it said \u201csingles out\u201d the Northern Marianas College and would take away its autonomy.<\/p>\n
House Bill 17-93, which proposes to amend existing statute to improve financial oversight over the college, is now on Gov. Benigno R. Fitial\u2019s desk, awaiting his signature. <\/p>\n
The bill, authored by Rep. Stanley Torres, calls for the college to submit a detailed report to the Legislature regularly about its financial records and transactions. The bill was crafted after the Legislature failed to compel the college to furnish it with specific records sometime in 2009.<\/p>\n
Based on the legislation, \u201cthe college only submits an annual report of accomplishments which for the 2003 fiscal year had just a two-page list of appropriations, and which for fiscal years 2004 and 2005 only provided one-page, pie-chart that had no financial details at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regents chair Juan Lizama said yesterday that even though NMC receives appropriation from the general fund, the college was created as an autonomous agency, governed by its own rules and policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody questions that the college receives funds from the Legislature or the governor [who sign the appropriation]\u2026but the issue here is autonomy of the institution,\u201d said Lizama.<\/p>\n
Regent Malua Peter also said that she\u2019s tired of defending the same old position with lawmakers despite having a series of meetings with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am really tired of this nonsense. We\u2019ve been meeting and meeting with the Legislature\u2026but what happened to these meetings?\u201d she told colleagues. \u201cIt only tells us that whenever a representative is disappointed with someone [at NMC] they would come up with a bill to correct it.\u201d <\/p>\n
She pointed out that the bill\u2019s author, Torres, had made it clear that the measure was intended for the previous NMC administration. Torres is a known critic of NMC, especially during the administration of Dr. Carmen Fernandez.<\/p>\n
Personnel committee chair Andrew Orsini said that \u201ckeeping the college\u2019s autonomy and free from any interference\u201d was clearly pointed out by the accreditation commission as key to NMC retaining its accreditation. He hopes the resolution would convince the governor to junk the bill as it will further endanger the college\u2019s stability.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will not stop. In fact, there\u2019s another pending legislation about NMC\u2026and whatever triggers all of this, I think we have long ways to go before we can make the \u2018power that be\u2019 understand about the college autonomy,\u201d said regent William Torres.<\/p>\n
He encouraged the board to conduct regular public forums to clear up misunderstandings and misconception about the institution.<\/p>\n
Interim president Lorraine T. Cabrera, for her part, said the college is always willing to provide and share financial information with the Legislature. She described the bill as \u201cunnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Board of Regents unanimously adopted yesterday a resolution that expresses its strong opposition to a bill that it said \u201csingles out\u201d the Northern Marianas College and would take away its autonomy.<\/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-152527","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\/152527","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=152527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}