His belief that the Saipan and Northern Islands Local Delegation did everything by the book and eagerness to find revenues for an ailing CNMI economy prompted Rep. Joseph Palacios (R-Saipan) to file a lawsuit against Gov. Benigno R. Fitial\u2019s veto of the local Saipan casino bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took us awhile to put it together. We, the leadership, did meet with the governor prior to him vetoing the bill. We tried to ask the governor to \u2018leave it to the courts. Let the courts decide because none of us are lawyers.\u2019 I believe we went through the process based on the legal opinion of the two legal counsels that we have,\u201d he said in interview with Saipan Tribune yesterday.<\/p>\n
The chairman of the SNILD Committee on Judicial and Governmental Operations on Friday filed a petition in Superior Court seeking declaratory relief that House Local Bill 17-44, as enacted by the delegation, be declared as a Commonwealth law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe findings are based on their [House legal counsels] legal opinion, we stand behind them. They\u2019re saying that it\u2019s constitutional and Saipan law is Commonwealth law. I was hoping that the governor would not veto it and let the court decide,\u201d said Palacios. <\/p>\n
Aside from infusing badly needed revenue to the CNMI\u2019s depleted coffers, Palacios believes that allowing the courts to decide on HLB 17-44\u2019s legality will help lawmakers finally settle the debate whether a local law is a CNMI-wide law.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this issue is not resolved now, future legislators may do the same thing and they may just repeat the process. With all due respect to the governor, it\u2019s not really a lawsuit. It\u2019s to declare which is which\u2014whether it\u2019s legal or not, whether it\u2019s constitutional or unconstitutional,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Palacios said that he\u2019s not a gambler and he and his delegation colleagues are just looking for means to raise revenue so they could help government employees out of the 64-hour austerity. He also believes that a Saipan casino industry will create more jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope the governor doesn\u2019t take it personally. I hope he just looks at it in a way that we lawmakers are just trying to revive our CNMI economy and help generate revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
His belief that the Saipan and Northern Islands Local Delegation did everything by the book and eagerness to find revenues for an ailing CNMI economy prompted Rep. Joseph Palacios (R-Saipan) to file a lawsuit against Gov. Benigno R. Fitial\u2019s veto of the local Saipan casino bill.<\/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-156318","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\/156318","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=156318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}