Superior Court associate judge David A. Wiseman directed the NMI Retirement Fund yesterday to pay the disability retirement benefits of a retiree and to take immediate action on the applications for disability retirement filed by three others.<\/p>\n
Wiseman ordered the Fund to pay Leilani M. Basa-Alam an annuity of 66-2\/3 percent of her salary at the time of separation from government service and back pay amounting to the difference dating back to April 4, 2009.<\/p>\n
Wiseman also ordered the Fund to give Barbara C. Santos, Mariano Arriola, and Balbina DLC. Taisacan the opportunity to resubmit their applications for disability retirement.<\/p>\n
The judge ordered the Fund\u2019s board to take immediate action and reach a determination in the cases of Santos, Arriola, and Taisacan within 30 days from the submission of their applications.<\/p>\n
In Basa-Alam\u2019s case, a factual determination has been made awarding disability retirement at a rate of 50 percent of her salary. Wiseman pointed out, though, that the CNMI Supreme Court\u2019s recent ruling in Michael P. Cody\u2019s case has made it clear that Public Law 6-17 applies to Basa-Alam and therefore a rate of 66-2\/3 percent should have been awarded.<\/p>\n
With respect to the cases of Santos, Arriola, and Taisacan, Wiseman remanded them to the Fund for a factual determination and decision in accordance with the law set forth in the Supreme Court ruling and in his order.<\/p>\n
The Fund board alleges that Santos and Arriola have not submitted any factual disputes.<\/p>\n
But Wiseman said he is reluctant to \u201cremand back to a body who appears to have little to no consideration of the urgency of claims before it, especially when such claims have a large impact on the livelihood of claimants, who by submitting applications for disability have impliedly limited capacity to work and earn a living.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiseman said that pursuant to law, the Fund board must consider anew the claims for disability retirement of Santos, Arriola and Taisacan in light of the board\u2019s fiduciary duty.<\/p>\n
The Fund had denied disability retirement to Arriola and Santos. Taisacan\u2019s application has been neither approved nor denied. Basa-Alam\u2019s application for disability was approved in the amount of 50 percent of her salary.<\/p>\n
The petitioners, through counsel Jeanne Rayphand, challenged the Fund\u2019s decision regarding disability retirement and the subsequent action taken by the board. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Superior Court associate judge David A. Wiseman directed the NMI Retirement Fund yesterday to pay the disability retirement benefits of a retiree and to take immediate action on the applications for disability retirement filed by three others.<\/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-157979","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\/157979","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=157979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}