Rep. Edwin K. Propst (Ind-Saipan) has introduced a House bill to correct the salary increase law, Public Law 19-83, and remove the salary increases of elected officials.<\/p>\n
PL19-83 set a new base salary schedule and increased the salary ceiling for classified civil service government employees. It also increased the salaries of all elected officials. It became a law on Jan. 20 even without Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 signature. Then-acting governor Arnold I. Palacios also did not sign it.<\/p>\n
Propst said that House Bill 20-39 is a legislative measure that is neither for the minority or the leadership. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is beyond party lines. The findings in the bill will explain everything since there are some that are real concerns. For the sake of brevity we limited our findings and other concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres said last week that there was no budget allocated for the increase and reiterated that he is not willing to get the money from other funds.; he\u2019d rather wait if there\u2019s supplemental budget that could be appropriated to fund the increase.<\/p>\n
Propst sided with Torres adding that the CNMI even has a debt of $471,758,182 from various agencies, compensations, and judgments. <\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate the efforts of Gov. Torres for coming out and stating that he will not find funding for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe increase that became law is an unfunded liability. There was no money appropriated. We have based it on future funds that will be generated from BGRT and the casino,\u201d said Propst, who added that there are more pressing issues the Legislature could have acted on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have medical referral program that is always underfunded. We have police officers who are still making $8 an hour with some of them have been working for 20 years or more. Other employees of critical agencies like nurses and firemen have no night differential and hazardous pay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a museum that is decrepit, and in dire need of repairs and adequate staffing. There\u2019s no curator to this day and we have to look at our rich history and take care of it. We have a landfill that is filling up quickly. Our Settlement Fund obligation is at $33 million and next year will be $45 million. These are some of the things that we need to address and look into.\u201d<\/p>\n
Propst said the government also owes millions of dollars from medical malpractice lawsuits and landowners, some of whom have already died without receiving a single centavo on their land compensation claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we are addressing this little by little, we still have a huge debt that needs to be settled and we have critical agencies that are in dire need of money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proactive approach<\/strong><\/p>\n Propst said PL 19-83 also opens the door for lawsuits because of some technicality. \u201cWe have taxpayers that are very likely to file a lawsuit because of the technical things that were done wrong. They may have a very strong case but we should not wait for taxpayers\u2019 lawsuits. We should\u2026address this immediately and correct the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe must look at our roles as public servants. It must be \u2018we before me.\u2019 We can\u2019t give ourselves an 80-percent increase while giving the people who voted for us, the frontline workers, only 5 percent. That is a huge disparity and I find it unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to have a little bit of fairness. If the consumer price index shows that this is what we deserve as salary then we should not neglect our frontline workers first, the civil servants. Public service requires sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the pay increase of 35 elected officials would cost close to $1.14 million annually. It will be a little over $800,000 for the remaining fiscal year 2017 if it ever gets funded. Propst\u2019s HB 20-39 finds PL 19-51 that established the Advisory Commission on the Compensation for Elected Officials, which was tasked to study and make recommendations in adjusting the elected officials\u2019 salaries, had exceeded the 60-day limit to transmit its report to the Legislature.<\/p>\n The commission also did not meet until October 2016, one month over the timeframe as stated in Section 5 (d) of PL 19-51. The salary increases of the elected officials should be canceled for their failure to act within the timeframe.<\/p>\n Propst\u2019s bill further states that members of the 19th Legislature that were re-elected to serve in the 20th violated the Government Ethics Codee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rep. Edwin K. Propst (Ind-Saipan) has introduced a House bill to correct the salary increase…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7019,20,1860,194],"class_list":["post-246267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-bgrt","tag-budget","tag-hb","tag-house-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246267","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nFindings<\/strong><\/p>\n