The Senate version of the CNMI government\u2019s budget for fiscal year 2016 is still $145 million, but there will be major changes in the appropriations particularly for the CNMI\u2019s law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
The Senate on Tuesday night unanimously voted \u201cyes\u201d to the budget, which will now go back to the House of Representatives for another round of review.<\/p>\n
According to Sen. Jude C. Hofschneider (R-Tinian), some $5.6 million have \u201cbeen moved around\u201d so that law enforcement agencies, particularly the Department of Public Safety, will get more.<\/p>\n
Hofschneider is chairman of the Senate Committee on Fiscal Affairs, which reviewed the budget after the Senate got the House version.<\/p>\n
DPS, according to Hofschneider, will get about 20 additional FTEs.<\/p>\n
The additional appropriation for DPS came from a \u201cmultitude of shifting funds,\u201d Hofschneider said, adding that there is also a cost overrun of $1 million that the Senate committee used for appropriations.<\/p>\n
According to him, it is not just DPS but also the Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the Division of Customs that will benefit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say this is a huge change,\u201d Hofschneider said the idea behind it \u201cis to ensure that there is enough police officers\u201d for the safety of the CNMI.<\/p>\n
He also said the consensus of the committee is that salary increases are long overdue for these departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe salary increases seem to favor only certain departments, and it seems to be close to inequity when it comes to law enforcement agencies,\u201d Hofschneider said.<\/p>\n
Senate President Victor C. Hocog (Ind-Rota) said if the House of Representatives \u201crejects\u201d the Senate version, then there might be a need to form a conference committee.<\/p>\n
The committee will have representatives from both Senate and House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
Hofschneider added that \u201cwe\u2019re ready to work with the House\u201d on the budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate version of the CNMI government\u2019s budget for fiscal year 2016 is still $145…<\/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":[20,26,35,65],"class_list":["post-208392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-cnmi","tag-dps","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208392","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=208392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}