{"id":218952,"date":"2016-01-19T06:06:46","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T20:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=218952"},"modified":"2016-01-19T06:06:46","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T20:06:46","slug":"premium-compensation-for-nmc-prexy-nixed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/premium-compensation-for-nmc-prexy-nixed\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Premium compensation\u2019 for NMC prexy nixed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
The Northern Marianas College Board of Regents voted and did not agree on giving \u201cpremium compensation\u201d to college president Dr. Sharon Hart. The said compensation was given to certain employees who came to work as well as participated in cleanups during the aftermath of Typhoon Soudelor. (Frauleine Villanueva-Dizon)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThe Board of Regents of the Northern Marianas College did not agree to compensate the college president under the category of \u201cpremium compensation\u201d\u2014a form of pay that the college gave to some of its personnel during the aftermath of Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n

After an executive session during their board meeting last Thursday, the board voted on whether or not to compensate college president Dr. Sharon Hart under the said category.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a discussion with regards to compensation and in regards to how the compensation would apply to an individual. That discussion led to the decision to come into regular session and the action to take is to state the question and vote on it,\u201d then-board chair Juan Lizama said coming into the public session.<\/p>\n

Board members voted nay, after the motion to vote was moved and seconded.<\/p>\n

The board did not disclose early on the person involved in the question as it was a personnel matter. <\/p>\n

However, Hart asked that the board state the question discussed during the executive session and waived the confidentiality for the personnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe person involved is the president,\u201d Lizama said, \u201cThe question is whether we would agree to the compensation or we will disagree and motion has been had and seconded and votes taken and basically it is obvious that majority of the board did not favor compensating the president under the category of premium compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Hart, premium compensation was given to a number of the college\u2019s employees who did come to work after Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n

She said a \u201cspecial\u201d and \u201chigher\u201d rate was given to those who were involved in the \u201chazardous cleanup.\u201d A different rate was also given to those employees who came in and did administrative work and other duties when the college was temporarily closed due to the extent of the damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, fall semester had to be pushed back to, as you know, late September. All of our courses had to be redone and so department chairs, deans, everybody had to come in and basically reorganize the entire operation of the fall semester,\u201d Hart said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe ended up paying employees\u2014those who came in\u2014we ended up paying those employees at two different rates. One, those who came in and did those types of responsibilities, I call them the \u2018administrative\u2019 the other duties, maybe like payroll of course had to be done, et cetera, et cetera. We paid them one rate. And then we paid a higher rate those who were involved in the hazardous [cleanup],\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Hart said the cost for the said compensation was about $110,000, which was partly reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She said the college shouldered about $60,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the board took action on today was the fact that the president was not to be compensated,\u201d Hart said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI ultimately must stand by the decision of the board,\u201d she added when asked if she will seek reconsideration of the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Board of Regents of the Northern Marianas College did not agree to compensate the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":218953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[69,262,938,6333],"class_list":["post-218952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-nmc","tag-northern-marianas-college","tag-sharon-hart","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218952","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}