A bill seeking to authorize the Department of Parks and Recreation to charge \u201cuser fees\u201d for the Grotto, a popular dive spot, has been deemed unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
House Bill 19-38, authored by Rep. Roman C. Benavente (Ind-Saipan), seeks to authorize the Parks and Recreation Division, in consultation with the Division of Fish and Wildlife, to charge visitors with the user fee. According to Benavente, locals are exempt from paying the proposed user fees of $3 to $5 because the user fee is \u201cnot a tax.\u201d<\/p>\n
The House of Representatives passed the bill this month.<\/p>\n
However, a legal opinion from Attorney General Edward Manibusan said: \u201cH.B. 19-38 is unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Grotto and its surrounding are public land. As such, all fees generated must be remitted to the Department of Public Lands. Pursuant to the Supreme Court\u2019s seminal decision in \u2018DPL vs. Commonwealth\u2019 2010 MP 14, the DPL must collect all fees, rentals, and revenues from public land and then remit a certain portion of the funds each year to the Marianas Public Land Trust,\u201d a letter from Manibusan said.<\/p>\n
The letter further said, \u201cAny attempt by the Legislature to divert any of the public land revenues, be it fees or lease payments, away from DPL and MPLT would be unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n
The House Committee on Natural Resources sought the AG\u2019s legal opinion on HB 19-38.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill seeking to authorize the Department of Parks and Recreation to charge \u201cuser fees\u201d…<\/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":[175,1860,194,2331],"class_list":["post-202870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-dpl","tag-hb","tag-house-bill","tag-public-lands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202870","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=202870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}