A bill that proposes to allocate all of the annual payments from a casino license to retirees\u2019 pension payments will be shelved temporarily.<\/p>\n
House Bill 19-21 was introduced by Rep. Blas Jonathan \u201cB.J.\u201d Attao (Ind-Saipan). \u2028\u201cThe bill by Rep. Attao will be tabled in the meantime,\u201d Rep. Antonio P. Sablan (Ind-Saipan) said.<\/p>\n
Sablan, who chairs the House Committee on Ways and Means where Attao\u2019s bill was referred to, said the committee decided to \u201cleave the bill to the committee\u201d and it will not be brought up at the House session today.<\/p>\n
He said most of the committee members seem to have \u201ca lot of issues\u201d with Attao\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n
The bill seeks to amend Public Law 18-56 or the CNMI\u2019s casino law. One observation is that the bill will effectively remove the fund allocation to the three senatorial districts coming from the casino license fees.<\/p>\n
Attao earlier aired his concern about the payment of retirees\u2019 pensions from the casino license fee, saying the actual distribution of the fee as stated in P.L.18-56 is not enough to make up for the 25 percent cut in the pension of all government retirees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Commonwealth needs approximately $17 million to pay in full the 25 percent reduction that was included in the Settlement Fund. Additionally, the Commonwealth will not receive the license fee on the fifth year, which means that retirees will again lose the entire 25 percent of their pension,\u201d Attao explained.<\/p>\n
He said H.B. 19-21 that he earlier introduced \u201creplaces the fifth year with the 40th year of license payment, which will be a plus for the casino [since] GDP calculations and the dollar value in the future will increase and a plus for the retirees as their pensions will be a continuous payment from the license fee.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI introduced HB 19-21 to provide for the actual intent of PL 18-56, which was to address the 25 percent reduction of CNMI government retirees,\u201d Attao said.<\/p>\n
He also said the CNMI has \u201ca tool in Public Law 18-56 which is being fine-tuned by House Bill 19-021 to direct the fees for the retirees right now so we can remove that problem from our table.\u201d<\/p>\n
HB 19-21 intends to amend PL 18-56 \u201cto dedicate the entire license fee collections for the payment of retirees\u2019 pension reduction.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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