While Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and lawmakers now agree to a Jan. 6 start of the 120-day timeline for coming up with a reapportionment\/redistricting plan instead of Aug. 24, they still want to wait for the attorney general\u2019s opinion on the matter.<\/p>\n
During Friday\u2019s closed-door meeting between the governor and lawmakers, the governor indicated that he has no problem identifying Jan. 6 as the start of the 120-day period for the Legislature to come up with its plan, said press secretary Angel Demapan yesterday.<\/p>\n
But Demapan said should the attorney general\u2019s opinion conclude that the 120-day period started on Aug. 24\u2014which would mean the Legislature lost its chance to come up with a reapportionment\/redistricting plan\u2014the Fitial administration would listen to lawmakers\u2019 concerns and recommendations.<\/p>\n
Rep. Joseph Palacios (R-Saipan), author of a pending initiative seeking to reduce the number of Saipan lawmakers in the House from 18 to nine, said yesterday he\u2019s looking forward to the AG\u2019s opinion, expected to be issued this week.<\/p>\n
If both the Legislature and the governor fail to come up with their reapportionment\/ redistricting plan as required by the Constitution after release of census results every 10 years, then any register voter could petition the court to do so.<\/p>\n
Some House members cautioned their colleagues and the governor against jumping to conclusion that a 22.7-percent decrease in Saipan\u2019s population is the only basis for cutting the number of House members. <\/p>\n
Palacios\u2019s initiative is now under review by the Committee on Judiciary and Governmental Operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and lawmakers now agree to a Jan. 6 start of the 120-day timeline for coming up with a reapportionment\/redistricting plan instead of Aug. 24, they still want to wait for the attorney general\u2019s opinion on the matter.<\/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-158542","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\/158542","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=158542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}