The House of Representatives was not able to decide on a draft budget act and will continue discussions in another session set for today.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers were supposed to adopt the proposed budget act, but decided to go into recess after almost four hours of deliberations on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) called for the recess, reminding lawmakers that deliberations might take until \u201cmidnight\u201d and that the legislative staff will also have to stay late.<\/p>\n
Rep. Antonio P. Sablan (Ind-Saipan) suggested that deliberations be continued, but a majority of his colleagues voted against it.<\/p>\n
At the session, Sablan introduced House Bill 19-86 or the \u201cAppropriations and Budget Authority Act of 2016,\u201d which the House Committee on Ways and Means adopted on July 2.<\/p>\n
The spending plan details a $149.5-million budget for fiscal year 2016, which is slightly higher than the government\u2019s earlier proposal of $145.8 million.<\/p>\n
One of the concerns raised were salary increases, particularly for the Executive Branch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did other agencies have increases?\u201d Rep. Ralph Yumul (Ind-Saipan) asked, noting that certain agencies do not have increases reflected on the balance sheets.<\/p>\n
Sablan said his committee had the option \u201cto help\u201d other agencies, and that at least lawmakers can help \u201csome of them,\u201d if not all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to understand that an across-the-board increase of government employees\u2019 salaries will cost us an additional $4 million,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n
Yumul, however, said it would have been fairer if no increases were given at all.<\/p>\n
More questions are expected to be raised today as the budget session continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House of Representatives was not able to decide on a draft budget act and…<\/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":[20,1414,508,194],"class_list":["post-208743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-executive-branch","tag-fy","tag-house-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208743","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=208743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}