Power was back on at the Legislature on Capital Hill late Friday afternoon and operations returned to normal yesterday.<\/p>\n
A staff said most of the offices conducted their own \u201cgeneral cleaning\u201d activities.<\/p>\n
The legislative building houses the offices of members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.<\/p>\n
The building was out of power for three weeks, while the Governor\u2019s Office\u2014where the Executive branch of the CNMI government is housed\u2014was using a generator.<\/p>\n
Early Monday, it was \u201cback to business\u201d for lawmakers, according to Rep. Antonio P. Sablan (Ind-Saipan).<\/p>\n
One major inconvenience of having no power, Sablan said, is that constituents had to go to different locations to air their concerns to lawmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were even supposed to relocate, but it is a good thing that power was restored Friday,\u201d he said, adding that lawmakers had to use the Superior Court in Susupe to hold a session and meetings.<\/p>\n
He clarified that it was Chief Justice Alexandro C. Castro who invited lawmakers to use one of the courtrooms for free.<\/p>\n
Earlier, House Speaker Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) said he requested the Federal Emergency Management Agency and then acting governor Ralph DLG. Torres to have a generator installed at the Legislature.<\/p>\n
\u201cI made a verbal request to the FEMA and to the acting governor. I believe all requests must be made by governor to the FEMA,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Budget meeting<\/strong><\/p>\n Sablan, meanwhile, said the members of the conference committee for both the House and Senate are set to hold their first meeting this Thursday, Sept. 3.<\/p>\n The committee will tackle and review the proposed government budget for fiscal year 2016.<\/p>\n The House of Representatives and Senate both agreed on the draft $145-million budget, but each presented radically different appropriations for certain CNMI government agencies.<\/p>\n One major difference is $5.6 million that the Senate \u201cmoved around\u201d so that more can be given to law enforcement agencies, particularly the Department of Public Safety.<\/p>\n The House eventually rejected the Senate version of the budget.<\/p>\n Reps. Sablan, Felicidad Ogomuro (R-Saipan), and Angel Demapan (R-Saipan) are the House\u2019s conference committee members.<\/p>\n Their counterparts in the Senate are Sens. Justo Quitugua (Ind-Saipan), Frank Cruz (R-Tinian), and Jude Hofschneider (R-Tinian), who chairs the Senate Committee on Fiscal Affairs that conducted the budget review for the Senate.<\/p>\n As with previous legislatures, the conference committee will seek to hammer out a compromise budget.<\/p>\n The budget that will be approved will then be sent to both the House and the Senate before being transmitted to Gov. Eloy S. Inos for signing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe top concern, I believe, will be the earmarked funds and how to allocate them,\u201d Sablan said, explaining that this earmarked funds are \u201coutside\u201d the $145-million proposed budget.<\/p>\n He said the conference committee might take several meetings before a budget can be agreed upon.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we want to give the governor a few weeks to review the budget,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n As mandated by the CNMI Constitution, the government should have a budget by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, or risk having to shut down operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Power was back on at the Legislature on Capital Hill late Friday afternoon and operations…<\/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":[20,26,65,50],"class_list":["post-209511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-cnmi","tag-house","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209511","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=209511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}