Gov. Benigno R. Fitial accepted Thursday morning the resignation of
\nCommonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Abe Malae, saying a
\nleadership change in CUC is necessary for four reasons, including lack
\nof aggressive action to seek out viable alternative energy sources
\nthat would provide cheaper power.<\/p>\n
Malae turned in his resignation late Wednesday afternoon, five days
\nafter Fitial placed CUC under a state of emergency again.<\/p>\n
The CUC executive director apparently was disappointed that the
\ngovernor placed CUC under a state of emergency, at a time when Malae
\nwas in California to attend a new generation nuclear technology
\npresentation.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers said it is unfortunate that the CNMI would lose its CUC
\ndirector at this time of crisis.<\/p>\n
Fitial, in a written statement issued after he told reporters early
\nThursday afternoon that he accepted Malae\u2019s resignation, said he does
\nnot see any prospect for change in the approach to issues of high
\nutility rates and alternative energy \u201cand thus it is time to bring in
\nnew leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fitial is likely to designate CUC deputy executive director Alan
\nFletcher to assume temporary leadership of CUC.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) called for a 3pm
\nemergency session to confirm three of the governor\u2019s nominees to the
\nPublic Utilities Commission, which regulates CUC and other utilities
\nfirm.<\/p>\n
More information to follow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial accepted Thursday morning the resignation of
\nCommonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Abe Malae, saying a
\nleadership change in CUC is necessary for four reasons, including lack
\nof aggressive action to seek out viable alternative energy sources
\nthat would provide cheaper power.<\/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-161488","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\/161488","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=161488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}