The Department of Finance is coordinating with other government departments regarding their concerns on funds, Finance Secretary Larrisa Larson said.<\/p>\n
Larson said her department is also ready to work with government departments should they need to clarify concerns on finances.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always have to be careful with your budget so you don\u2019t overspend,\u201d Larson, in a short comment, said.<\/p>\n
The official is apparently giving the advice to several government departments most of which are in the process of finalizing budget proposals to the government.<\/p>\n
In the last few weeks, several of the \u201cbig\u201d departments\u2014including the Department of Public Safety, Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services, and Public School System\u2014have presented their budget requests.<\/p>\n
The budget hearings will be critical, because the budget requests of government departments exceeded the $145.8-million proposed budget by $38 million.<\/p>\n
Meeting request<\/strong><\/p>\n In May, the Commonwealth Casino Commission said it will be seeking a review of its finances as it continues to hire more personnel in preparation for the opening of a casino in Garapan. The regulatory body is being funded by the nonrefundable, exclusive casino license application fee set by the government.<\/p>\n The commission\u2019s budget is not included in the CNMI government\u2019s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016.<\/p>\n Since the initial budget from the license fees is not replenishing itself, the commission is also requesting additional funding of $2.6 million.<\/p>\n Commissioner Joseph Reyes said there is a need for the casino commission to \u201cclear up\u201d its current finances with the Department of Finance.<\/p>\n He told his fellow commissioners that the body needs to check if there are \u201cobligations\u201d and that the regulators need to \u201cmove forward.\u201d<\/p>\n The commission did not disclose how much of its initial $2 million budget is still available.<\/p>\n In its latest meeting this month, the commission has yet to set up the meeting with the Finance department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Department of Finance is coordinating with other government departments regarding their concerns on funds,…<\/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":[20,4982,3126,215],"class_list":["post-204198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-commissioner-joseph-reyes","tag-commonwealth-casino-commission","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204198","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=204198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}