Attorney General Edward Manibusan extended Thursday his support as chief legal officer of the Commonwealth to the new administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and Lt. Gov. Victor B. Hocog, writing to the CNMI chief executive of his goal to centralize and consolidate all legal services for autonomous agencies and public corporations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is mandated by our Constitution,\u201d said Manibusan, who asked for their support and a meeting to discuss the matter.<\/p>\n
To accomplish this constitutional responsibility, the Office of the Attorney General \u201cmust require each autonomous agency and public corporation and to some extent executive departments to share the cost for legal services,\u201d Manibusan wrote. He said the OAG does not have adequate funds to operate\u2014a situation similar to an \u201cunfunded liability\u201d where the OAG is mandated to perform without being provided sufficient funds to comply with that mandate. <\/p>\n
Manibusan believes autonomous agencies and public corporations have sufficient funding in their budget to pay for legal services, and these agencies would realize substantial savings if the OAG were to serve as legal counsel rather than retaining the services of private counsel.<\/p>\n
The consolidation and centralization of legal services, Manibusan said, will achieve several key points: the Commonwealth will maintain consistent policy on legal issues: it will result in the efficient use of the Commonwealth\u2019s resources; it would reduce conflicts between agencies; and it would allow assistant AGs to be in constant contact and would provide better procedures for legal work.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026It will also place an obligation on assistant AGs to provide independent and objective advice which could be jeopardized when agencies hire their own counsel without my approval,\u201d addd Manibusan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe began the process of consolidation with [then] governor [Eloy] Inos earlier in the year,\u201d Manibusan said. \u201cWe have made some progress in integrating the OAG\u2019s legal services with several agencies, but will need further discussion and collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n
He adds that the OAG has a firm foundation for accomplishing this process, and that the support cooperation of the independent and autonomous agencies is necessary to achieve this consolidated effort. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attorney General Edward Manibusan extended Thursday his support as chief legal officer of the Commonwealth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2626,20,86,8928],"class_list":["post-217798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attorney-general","tag-budget","tag-oag","tag-victor-hocog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217798","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}