Saipan Mayor Donald P. Flores has not gone off-island on official or unofficial business ever since the Attorney General\u2019s Office warned him that non-compliance with Saipan Local Law 17-08 would warrant the filing of criminal charges against him.<\/p>\n
SLL 17-08 designates the Saipan Municipal Council chairman as acting mayor when the mayor\u2014in this case, Flores\u2014is off-island.<\/p>\n
In the past and prior to the warning from Attorney General Joey P. San Nicolas, Flores had designated his adviser, Henry Hofschneider, as acting mayor.<\/p>\n
Flores said in a recent interview that he hasn\u2019t made any off-island trips since the Oct. 15 warning from the OAG, adding there were also no invitations or reasons to do so.<\/p>\n
That is not to say that the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office is standing pat with regards to SLL 17-08. Flores said they are currently consulting their lawyer and are pushing to have the statute repealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be officially responding to that with my lawyer. We are also doing another approach and we\u2019re talking to the Legislature to take a look at the law if it\u2019s constitutional or not. If it\u2019s unconstitutional then it should be repealed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Saipan mayor said SLL 17-08 is unfair and impractical.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor even one day, that law states that the mayor should do that. Still we\u2019re trying to determine of the enactment of SLL 17-08 is constitutional. The attorney general said that I could be arrested if I leave and would be filed criminal charges.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the OAG, Flores designated his adviser, Hofschneider, as acting mayor on Aug. 30 to Sept. 4, 2012; Feb. 4 to 12, 2013; July 19 to 22; and Sept. 29 to Oct. 4, 2013.<\/p>\n
Flores may face as much as a year of jail time and fined $1,000 or both if proven guilty of violating the statute.<\/p>\n
Last September, Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council chair Ramon B. Camacho wrote to the OAG complaining about Flores\u2019 continued violation of SLL-17-08.<\/p>\n
In the letter, Camacho said that Flores designates an officer-in-charge \u201cwhenever the mayor was physically outside the CNMI on official travel or on personal business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camacho asked San Nicolas to write Flores a letter advising him to comply with SLL 17-08. In absence of that, Camacho said, a certified question to the CNMI Supreme Court or a declaratory relief is an option available to the OAG in effecting the application of SLL 17-08. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan Mayor Donald P. Flores has not gone off-island on official or unofficial business ever since the Attorney General\u2019s Office warned him that non-compliance with Saipan Local Law 17-08 would warrant the filing of criminal charges against him.<\/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-174855","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\/174855","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=174855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}