With the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. facing possible receivership and breach of a stipulated order, some lawmakers said yesterday the Inos administration should consider tapping $10 million in utility vouchers that casino developer Best Sunshine International Ltd. plans to give out by mid-October, commit the next $15 million annual casino license fee to fund CUC, or impose across-the-board budget cuts to give to the utilities agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cA minimum $2-million government funding for CUC will show good faith effort on our part to help CUC,\u201d House Public Utilities, Transportation and Communications Commission chair Rep. Larry Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) told Saipan Tribune yesterday.<\/p>\n
Deleon Guerrero said Gov. Eloy S. Inos still has the budget bill so he can line-item veto it to give more funds to CUC.<\/p>\n
The PUTC Committee chair also said the governor can implement an across-the-board budget cut, and those funds can then be used to pay CUC.<\/p>\n
The Public School System, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., the central government, and other agencies owe CUC over $20 million in unpaid utility debts. This is in addition to millions of dollars that residential users also owe CUC.<\/p>\n
Rep. Ray Tebuteb (Ind-Saipan) separately said Saipan might once again experience rolling blackouts if the government does not help fund its power, water, and wastewater operations.<\/p>\n
Tebuteb said the administration may consider asking Best Sunshine to directly contribute $10 million to CUC for its operations rather than use that $10 million in utility vouchers to residents as part of its community chest proposal.<\/p>\n
Under the $3.14-billion Saipan casino license agreement, Best Sunshine will provide $10 million in the form of CUC vouchers within 60 days of the Aug. 12 date of license issuance. <\/p>\n
To date, Best Sunshine does not have a clear cut criteria yet in identifying recipients of these vouchers.<\/p>\n
Leon Guerrero agrees with Tebuteb\u2019s proposal to tap the $10 million, pointing out that \u201ctime is of the essence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSince Best Sunshine will have to distribute $10 million by mid-October anyway, why can\u2019t this money be given directly to CUC?\u201d he said. \u201cThat way, everyone really benefits because they won\u2019t have to experience power outages for example because CUC has funds to operate and maintain its facilities and equipment, and not only those who are supposed to get vouchers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tebuteb said another option is for the administration to set aside Best Sunshine\u2019s next payment of $15 million in annual casino license fee for CUC.<\/p>\n
The lawmaker acknowledged the tough choice between restoring 25 percent of retirees\u2019 pension next year or going into rolling blackouts once again that will affect not only retirees but everyone in the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s high potential of rolling blackouts again in the next few months. \u2026But I hope I\u2019m wrong. It\u2019s now a policy call,\u201d Tebuteb said.<\/p>\n
Leon Guerrero said while this is another option, it will still be about a year before the CNMI could receive the $15 million annual license fee. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. facing possible receivership and breach of a stipulated order, some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[988,256,49,244],"class_list":["post-179017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-best-sunshine","tag-casino","tag-cuc","tag-utility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179017","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}