Gov. Eloy S. Inos presided over his first ever meeting with members of the 19th Legislature and discussed key issues in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
Topics discussed at the meeting included the upcoming budget, health care, utilities, CW visa issues, the Air Force\u2019s divert plan, and land compensation, according to Lt. Gov. Ralph DLG. Torres.<\/p>\n
In an interview after the two-hour long, closed-door meeting, Torres stressed that first on the agenda was just \u201cto welcome everybody on board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres said the administration asked for \u201ccollaboration\u201d from leaders of the Senate and House in addressing these issues. \u201cIt was an opportunity for leaders to voice their concerns as we move forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that as far the governor is concerned, the priority right now is the budget, which the central government must submit to the Legislature by April 1.<\/p>\n
Asked if the government will have a bigger budget for this year, Torres said \u201cwe are discussing it right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rep. Glenn Maratita (R-Saipan) said most of the concerns \u201crelate to the availability of funding\u201d and that the governor has \u201cacknowledged\u201d that these concerns do exist, particularly land compensation, \u201cwhich is long overdue.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Speaker Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) added that the governor wanted to meet with heads of the Senate and House committees initially, but also extended the meeting to all members of the Legislature.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe governor is essentially asking what the Legislature can do to help address some of the concerns that we have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On his part, Guerrero said he brought up the issue of CW visa for foreign workers during the discussion with the governor.<\/p>\n
But the discussions are all exploratory, as far as the Legislature is concerned, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Eloy S. Inos presided over his first ever meeting with members of the 19th…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[418,20,118,65],"class_list":["post-193912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-air-force","tag-budget","tag-cw","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193912","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}