{"id":23794,"date":"2012-07-12T05:47:20","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T05:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=23794"},"modified":"2012-07-12T05:47:20","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T05:47:20","slug":"senate-names-conferees-to-break-deadlock-on-article-12-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/senate-names-conferees-to-break-deadlock-on-article-12-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate names conferees to break deadlock on Article 12 initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) has named three Senate conferees that will work with their counterparts in the House of Representatives to break a deadlock on an Article 12 legislative initiative.<\/div>\n<p>Sen. Ralph Torres (R-Saipan), the Resources and Economic Development Program Committee chair, will lead the three-member conferees team from the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>The conference committee will attempt to come up with a compromise on the initiative, which seeks to change the 25-percent blood quantum requirement to \u201cat least some degree\u201d of Chamorro or Carolinian blood or a combination of these, in order to be considered a person of Northern Marianas descent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know the importance of addressing the blood quantum, as well as the 99-year lease and I hope the conference committee will result in addressing both issues,\u201d Torres told Saipan Tribune yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>The other two conferees on House Legislative Initiative 17-3, House Draft 1, Senate Substitute 1 are Senate Vice President Jude Hofschneider (R-Tinian) and Sen. Juan Ayuyu (Ind-Rota).<\/p>\n<p>Torres said the first meeting of the Senate and House conferees may be next week.<\/p>\n<p>Their House counterparts are acting speaker Felicidad Ogumoro (Cov-Saipan), House Natural Resources Committee chair Joe Palacios (R-Saipan), and Rep. Ray Tebuteb (R-Saipan).<\/p>\n<p>Under Article 12 of the CNMI Constitution, only persons of Northern Marianas descent can own land in the CNMI.<\/p>\n<p>The House rejected on Friday the Senate&#8217;s amendment to HLI 17-3, HD1, which inserted a provision increasing the maximum number of years on private land leases from the current 55 years to 99 years.<\/p>\n<p>This comes barely a month before the deadline for submitting legislative initiatives to the Commonwealth Election Commission, for placement on the Nov. 6 ballot.<\/p>\n<p>Manglona, in a separate interview, said he also named the three Senate conferees on House Bill 17-214, authored by Rep. Stanley Torres (Ind-Saipan), which seeks to strengthen the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission.<\/p>\n<p>Leading the conferees is Ayuyu, also the chairman of the Public Utilities, Transportation and Communications Committee. The two others are Sen. Henry San Nicolas (Cov-Tinian) and Hofschneider.<\/p>\n<p>By Haidee V. Eugenio<br \/>\nReporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) has named three Senate conferees that will work with their&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[242,194,186,470],"class_list":["post-23794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-commonwealth-election-commission","tag-house-bill","tag-initiative","tag-northern-marianas-descent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23794","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}