Almost $1 million in the CNMI government\u2019s total $4.176 million excess spending just for personnel alone in fiscal year 2011 was incurred by the Legislature, whose members have yet to fully review Gov. Benigno R. Fitial\u2019s FY 2011 report showing a $25.8 million deficit.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee chair Jovita Taimanao (Ind-Rota) said yesterday that her panel will conduct an oversight hearing on the first quarter of FY 2012\u2019s budget \u201cto ensure that we don\u2019t incur additional deficit.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Ways and Means chair Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan), along with Taimanao, Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan), and other lawmakers, were also surprised to learn that the governor\u2019s financial report included almost $1 million in personnel overspending by the Legislature.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that\u2019s an error, but if that\u2019s accurate, that is too much and irresponsible,\u201d said Basa, adding that he will further review the governor\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
Fitial reported that the $25.8 million deficit was a combination of $565,456 in revenue shortfall and over $25.2 million in overspending at a time when the revised budget was only $122 million in FY 2011.<\/p>\n
The bulk of these over-expenditures were from the Department of Public Health, its Commonwealth Health Center, Medical Referral, and Medicaid.<\/p>\n
Of the $25.2 million over-expenditure, almost $4.2 million was in the area of personnel.<\/p>\n
And of the $4.2 million, over $2.8 million was incurred by DPH and its component agencies.<\/p>\n
The Legislature, for its part, incurred $931,101 in over-spending for personnel alone.<\/p>\n
Taimanao said the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee will assess the governor\u2019s report and find out why the Legislature was reported to have almost $1 million in overspending for personnel alone.<\/p>\n
This review is in addition to an oversight hearing on the first quarter of the 2012 budget.<\/p>\n
Yumul said the almost $1 million in excess spending for personnel might have been caused by the Legislature\u2019s failure to comply with the governor\u2019s request to reduce allotment by 9.76 percent when he revised the FY 2011 budget from $132.5 million to $122 million.<\/p>\n
He also pointed out that the personnel spending includes not only lawmakers\u2019 salaries that are constitutionally protected, but also contributions to the Retirement Fund, life insurance, and medical insurance.<\/p>\n
Besides DPH and the Legislature, the other government departments and agencies with excess spending on personnel alone include:<\/p>\n
-Department of Public Safety, $651,959;<\/p>\n
-Office of the Attorney General, $255,795;<\/p>\n
-Rota, $398,527;<\/p>\n
-Judiciary, $172,143; and<\/p>\n
-Tinian, $97,951.<\/p>\n
The $25.8 million budget deficit in FY 2011 despite 16-hour work cuts biweekly and other austerity measures brings the CNMI government\u2019s \u201cestimated\u201d total cumulative deficit to $370 million. The deficit in FY 2009 was $300.8 million and in 2008, $256.3 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Almost $1 million in the CNMI government\u2019s total $4.176 million excess spending just for personnel alone in fiscal year 2011 was incurred by the Legislature, whose members have yet to fully review Gov. Benigno R. Fitial\u2019s FY 2011 report showing a $25.8 million deficit.<\/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-157872","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\/157872","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=157872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}