Government employees and the public fearing another partial shutdown may now heave a sigh of relief after a joint House and Senate committee was able to break the deadlock yesterday on most issues that were blocking the forward momentum of the fiscal year 2012 budget plan.<\/p>\n
The eight-member conference committee was able to reach a compromise on the major differences between the House and Senate versions of the $102 million spending bill, including increased funding for education, lawmakers\u2019 and leadership accounts, and Rota and Tinian allocations, sources said.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough comes with less than two weeks to go before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.<\/p>\n
Among other things, the 29 lawmakers\u2019 individual allocation will no longer be \u201czeroed out\u201d as senators had proposed but will remain at the current level of over $71,000 a year.<\/p>\n
The House and Senate leadership accounts are also no longer zeroed out, but will remain at $138,000 each.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am confident there will be no shutdown,\u201d said one of the lawmakers. <\/p>\n
The Northern Marianas College and the Public School System will get additional funding of $2 million to $3 million as senators had proposed, but details as to how much of this will come from employers\u2019 fee of $150 for each foreign worker hired will be known today.<\/p>\n
Acting governor Eloy S. Inos, who joined the conference committee meeting yesterday afternoon, had a conservative estimate of $1.5 million to be collected from the Commonwealth-only worker rule.<\/p>\n
Most of these, according to lawmakers, will be given to PSS and NMC.<\/p>\n
Tinian and Rota won\u2019t get additional funding of $362,719 and $250,000, respectively, as senators had proposed, but Tinian\u2019s budget under the House version will be increased by some $110,000, equal to Rota\u2019s funding.<\/p>\n
The Fitial administration will also provide more information today as to the impact of discontinuing the land lease payment for La Fiesta, which costs the CNMI government some $200,000 annually.<\/p>\n
Conferees, as well as the administration, will also find out whether some $500,000 to $700,000 in additional MPLT funds have been remitted and could be an added source of funding.<\/p>\n
The conferees are led by Rep. Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan) and Sen. Jovita Taimanao (Ind-Rota).<\/p>\n
The other members are Senate vice president Jude Hofschneider (R-Tinian), floor leader Pete Reyes (R-Saipan), Sen. Ralph Torres (R-Saipan), Rep. Ralph Demapan (Cov-Saipan), Rep. Fred Deleon Guerrero (R-Saipan) and Rep. Sylvester Iguel.<\/p>\n
If and when the conference committee comes up with a draft bill by noon today, that bill could be introduced in today\u2019s House session at 2pm.<\/p>\n
If the draft bill isn\u2019t finalized by tomorrow, then the House could postpone today\u2019s session and reset it for Thursday.<\/p>\n
Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) also scheduled yesterday a Friday, 10am session.<\/p>\n
The progress made by the conference committee gives hope that the CNMI will not have another partial government shutdown at the start of the fiscal year.<\/p>\n
Stanley\u2019s local budget bill<\/p>\n
In other news, Rep. Stanley Torres (Ind-Saipan) prefiled a local budget bill for fiscal year 2012.<\/p>\n
Torres, in an interview, said he cannot sit down and do nothing to address a possible shutdown should the budget deadlock continues.<\/p>\n
As precautionary measure, he prefiled House Local Bill 17-57, to make appropriations for the operations of Saipan within the CNMI government.<\/p>\n
The local bill identifies $94 million in net budgetary resources available for appropriations for the new fiscal year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Government employees and the public fearing another partial shutdown may now heave a sigh of relief after a joint House and Senate committee was able to break the deadlock yesterday on most issues that were blocking the forward momentum of the fiscal year 2012 budget plan.<\/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-155231","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\/155231","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=155231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}