Superior Court associate judge Kenneth L. Govendo has stated that he does not share the view that placing the NMI Retirement Fund under federal receivership would solve the Fund\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n
At a status hearing last week, Govendo said there are some who believe that federal receivership for the Fund will be the \u201cmagic bullet\u201d to solve the whole problem.<\/p>\n
Govendo said he could not see that happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt still comes down to the lack of money,\u201d the judge pointed out.<\/p>\n
Govendo inquired the status of the receivership request filed by attorney Bruce Jorgensen on behalf of unnamed plaintiffs, who sued the Fund and Gov. Benigno R. Fitial over alleged non-payment of their retirement benefits.<\/p>\n
Viola Alepuyo, counsel for Fund, replied that Judge A. Wallace Tashima recused himself from hearing a request for a status conference and motion to lift stay order on the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Alepuyo said the new hearing date before another judge would be July 24, 2011.<\/p>\n
Govendo said he is well aware that the government is in a dire financial situation and funds are just not available.<\/p>\n
Govendo wished he could solve the problem as he knew that a lot of retirees think he should be able to produce a \u201cmagic bullet\u2019 and solve everything.<\/p>\n
The judge said he is issuing the orders and some people think he should also do the collecting for the Fund, \u201cwhich is certainly not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
In June 2009, Govendo ruled that the CNMI government owes the Fund $231.6 million in damages and that the law suspending government contributions to the Fund is unconstitutional. As of February 2011, the government\u2019s debt has reportedly grown to $317 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Superior Court associate judge Kenneth L. Govendo has stated that he does not share the view that placing the NMI Retirement Fund under federal receivership would solve the Fund\u2019s problems.<\/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-153227","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\/153227","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=153227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}