Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said he is looking into filling the vacant positions in the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission.<\/p>\n
At present, the regulatory agency has only three commissioners, two members short of the total five seats that they have. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be working to fill those positions,\u201d Torres told Saipan Tribune. <\/p>\n
According to Torres, there is a challenge in filling in the members of the commission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking seriously into the CPUC board because it\u2019s always been a very difficult board to fill,\u201d Torres said, \u201cOf course, with the role that they have, it\u2019s really not easy to fill those positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate interview, CPUC chair Joe Guerrero said he has reached out to the governor as well as the Attorney General regarding their membership. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think he is still searching,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
Because there is a minimum of three commissioners for CPUC to function, if only one of them is absent or not available, they cannot do business.<\/p>\n
Two out of the three members that they currently have will end their term in May.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, my term ends May 30 so does Oscar Quitugua representing Rota,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
Another commissioner, Dave Guerrero, will end his term next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I don\u2019t get reappointed or I don\u2019t get a replacement then the commission will not be able to function,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Similarly, the governor said he will also look into replacing Commonwealth Utilities Corp. director Chris Concepcion who will be resigning.<\/p>\n
Concepcion will take up his position as managing director for the Marianas Visitors Authority in April. <\/p>\n
Concepcion has mentioned to the governor that he needs to focus on his new responsibilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Chris needs to resign, then I thank him for his services and his time [as CUC director]. Now that he\u2019s playing a different role, and he has to resign, I respect that,\u201d Torres said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll look into having somebody to replace him in his position,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said he is looking into filling the vacant positions in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2714,915,49,4495],"class_list":["post-224225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chris-concepcion","tag-cpuc","tag-cuc","tag-dave-guerrero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224225","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=224225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}