The Senate may not come up with a version of a draft government budget before the House version is adopted.<\/p>\n
The Senate has started conducting its own budget hearings yesterday.<\/p>\n
Sen. Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian), chair of the Senate Committee on Fiscal Affairs, said the budget hearings are meant for senators as a way to ask more questions to CNMI departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot necessarily, but we hold hearing to know more about other significant number of issues,\u201d Hofschneider said, when asked if the Senate will draft its own version of the budget.<\/p>\n
He said the Senate will instead wait for the House version.<\/p>\n
The House version has been adopted by the House Committee on Ways and Means but is yet to be presented to the whole body. A House session is currently being scheduled to discuss the committee-adopted budget<\/p>\n
Hofschneider clarified that the Senate committee he heads will start with the bigger departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have started with the big ticket items for the hearing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, a budget hearing for the Department of Public Safety was conducted.<\/p>\n
Other \u201cbig ticket\u201d agencies, such the Public School System, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation, among others, are also scheduled for the budget hearing, Hofschneider said.<\/p>\n
The House version of the budget adopted by the Ways and Means Committee and was pegged at $149.5 million.<\/p>\n
This \u201cbudget bill\u201d for fiscal year 2016 is slightly higher than the government\u2019s earlier proposal of $145.8 million.<\/p>\n
Rep. Antonio P. Sablan (Ind-Saipan), chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means pre-filed House Bill 19-86 or the \u201cAppropriations and Budget Authority Act of 2016\u201d last week.<\/p>\n
A House session is expected to be convened soon by House Speaker Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) to approve the draft bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just passed the draft budget. It will be presented to the whole body and if approved, will be transmitted to the Senate,\u201d Sablan earlier said.<\/p>\n
The House Committee on Ways and Means in the last few weeks has been conducting budget deliberations for the government departments in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Sablan said as expected, most of the agencies wanted more than what was proposed.<\/p>\n
During the deliberations, committee members looked at the personnel requirements of the various departments, as well as possible sources of budget allocations on the balance sheets.<\/p>\n
Some of the biggest CNMI departments, meanwhile, are scheduled to appear before the Senate chamber for separate budget hearings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate may not come up with a version of a draft government budget before…<\/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":[20,26,5715,65],"class_list":["post-206099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-cnmi","tag-commonwealth-healthcare-corporation","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206099","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=206099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}