On Sept. 16, 2015, Superior Court Associate Judge David A. Wiseman granted the Tinian Mayor\u2019s Office\u2019s motion to dismiss the Tinian Casino Gaming and Control Commission\u2019s lawsuit against Tinian Mayor Joey P. San Nicolas and Tinian municipal treasurer Charlene M. Lizama, in their individual capacities, finding that the mayor and the municipal treasurer are entitled to the qualified immunity defense.<\/p>\n
TCGCC sued the Mayor\u2019s Office for refusing to pay executive director Lucy Blanco-Maritita and employees of the TCGCC beyond what was budgeted for under the Tinian & Aguiguan Municipal Legislative Delegation Budget Act for fiscal year 2015. Blanco-Maratita and TCGCC employees were paid only the salary amount as allocated under the Tinian Budget Act.<\/p>\n
The judge stated that \u201cfor the limited purpose of ruling on this 12(b)(6) motion and in consideration of its procedural posture, the court finds that the salary increases in question were a constitutionally-protected property interest at this time.\u201d However, the judge dismissed TCGCC\u2019s complaint, agreeing with the mayor\u2019s argument that the constitutionally protected rights were not \u201cclearly established.\u201d The Mayor\u2019s Office argued that the Casino Act and Tinian Local Ordinance 18-3 are \u201ctwo irreconcilable sets of laws\u201d as one allows the commission to set its own salaries and the other prevents the commission from increasing the salaries beyond what is budgeted.<\/p>\n
San Nicolas is pleased with the dismissal and notes that contrary to TCGCC\u2019s statement that this is a \u201cclear victory for the commission,\u201d the only matter that was resolved by the order was the issue of whether he can be held personally liable for following the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis dismissal only answers whether I can be held personally liable for halting payments of salary beyond what is provided for under the Budget Act. It doesn\u2019t resolve the question of whether the Gaming Act or the Budget Act is controlling, with respect to the ability of the commission, without going through the budgeting process, to give raises to employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mayor further points out that the court\u2019s finding of a constitutional violation was only for the limited purposes of ruling on the motion to dismiss. \u201cIn dismissing the commission\u2019s claim, the court stated that the commission\u2019s right to receive a higher salary was not a \u2018clearly established\u2019 right. How the commission can claim a clear victory is premature and misleading at this point.\u201d (Tinian Mayor\u2019s Office)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Sept. 16, 2015, Superior Court Associate Judge David A. Wiseman granted the Tinian Mayor\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1339,1583,4053,1866],"class_list":["post-210749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-san-nicolas","tag-tcgcc","tag-tinian-local-ordinance","tag-tinian-mayor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210749","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\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}