A lawmaker wants to make Saipan the official capital of the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Sen. Teresita A. Santos (R-Rota) introduced Senate Bill 19-19, which was passed on third and final reading by the Senate in a session last week.<\/p>\n
The proposed bill now heads to the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
Santos, in an interview, said one of the main reasons she is pushing for Saipan to be the Commonwealth\u2019s capital is because it is where the government offices and key agencies are located.<\/p>\n
Among the three major islands of the CNMI, Saipan also has the largest population, Santos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is where the Legislature and Governor\u2019s Office are located, and I think it is but proper to make it the CNMI\u2019s capital,\u201d Santos said.<\/p>\n
S.B. 19-19 further said the CNMI \u201cdoes not have an official capital despite having an island chain that consists of the islands of Saipan, Rota, and Tinian.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santos said making Saipan the CNMI capital may also have \u201cbenefits for business.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the 2010 Census, the CNMI has a population of more than 50,000.<\/p>\n
Saipan contains the largest population and also a larger landmass compared to Rota and Tinian.<\/p>\n
The administrative center is located on Capital Hill on Saipan, which to most, makes Saipan the \u201ctraditional\u201d capital of the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A lawmaker wants to make Saipan the official capital of the CNMI. Sen. Teresita A….<\/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":[182,26,65,1411],"class_list":["post-195357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-capital-hill","tag-cnmi","tag-house","tag-senate-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195357","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=195357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}