The administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres aims to submit its fiscal year 2017 budget to the Legislature before May 1, a month after the expected deadline of April 1, or no later than six months before the beginning of the fiscal year, per Commonwealth law.<\/p>\n
Asked to explain the new deadline, the governor\u2019s spokesperson Ivan Blanco pointed to the part in the law where \u201cin the event of change in administration, the new hovernor shall make his or her first submission no later than five months before the beginning of the fiscal year.\u201d Torres, along with Lt. Gov. Victor Hocog, took the helms of government after the untimely passing of the late governor Eloy S. Inos last December.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Torres met with the leadership of the Legislature yesterday morning to discuss the budget.<\/p>\n
Sen. Justo Quitugua (Ind-Saipan) and Rep. Joseph Leepan Guerrero (R-Saipan) separately confirmed Torres\u2019 aim to submit a budget before May 1.<\/p>\n
Quitugua said \u201cas soon as they are done identifying all the resources and putting all the department\u201d submissions, \u201cthey will be sending [the budget] to us,\u201d but there is \u201cnothing concrete yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether the pushback in the deadline was because of the new administration, Quitugua said, \u201cNo. That should not be a reason.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI think they are just putting the resources together\u2026The administration can always, like in the past when I was in the House when the budget is going to be late, the governor will advise that it will be one week, two weeks late,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said Torres indicated they are looking at giving all governmental agencies across the board \u201cequated allocations.\u201d <\/p>\n
Guerrero said, for example, Torres would not take away money from agency to subsidize another.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody is going to be proportionate to what they spend in this\u201d fiscal year,\u201d Guerrero told Saipan Tribune. \u201cYou spend FY \u201916 this much, that\u2019s about what you will be getting, whatever additional assistance you might really need might be forthcoming\u201d but \u201cwe haven\u2019t seen it so it\u2019s difficult to quantify how the budget was\u201d formulated, he added.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said another concern was with the Department of Public Safety given the new gun laws to be set in place after a federal court ruling struck down the ban on handguns in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cDPS will need to get adequate equipment because the gun law\u2026is looking moving forward to being signed into law. The governor wanted to make sure frontline officers are fully protected. He\u2019s looking at giving additional money to DPS,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to him, it looks brighter,\u201d Guerrero said, when asked about an increase in revenue projections. \u201c\u2026I don\u2019t know how bright it is, but hopefully in the coming years, we are going to see a better economic growth. It will be better for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres earlier told Saipan Tribune that CNMI mayor\u2019s offices would see an increase in their budgets for next fiscal year, suggesting at an overall growth in revenue projections.<\/p>\n
The Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office will see a $209,000 increase from a budget last year of $1.8 million, the Northern Island Mayor\u2019s Office will see a proposed increase to $505,000 budget from a $340,000 budget, the Rota Mayor\u2019s Office will see an increase to $6.7 million from $6.4 million, and from a current budget of $6.6 million, the Tinian Mayor\u2019s Office will see a proposed budget of $6.8 million, according to Torres.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune revealed last month that the Torres administration is optimistic and anticipate \u201cdouble-digit forecasted revenue increases.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres aims to submit its fiscal year 2017 budget…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[20,26,35,38],"class_list":["post-225014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-budget","tag-cnmi","tag-dps","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225014","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=225014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}