Board of Education member Herman T. Guerrero insists that the Public School System\u2019s share in the fiscal year 2018 casino gross revenue tax isn\u2019t enough, based on the CNMI Constitution.<\/p>\n
He said that its recommended share of $2 million is not final and is very far from its expected $15 million. <\/p>\n
\u201cI remember during the budget process, even before the fiscal year began, they [lawmakers] kept mentioning that they will give PSS an additional $15 million,\u201d he said. \u201cNow even if the House goes with a different figure, then we are going to look at the Senate helping us. They are more receptive to us than the House in terms of our budget needs.\u201d <\/p>\n
In an emergency Senate session last September, Sen. Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) pointed out that the CNMI Constitution mandates a budget for PSS that is 25 percent \u201cof what is considered the general fund.\u201d With general fund revenues estimated at $46 million, 25 percent is $11 million.<\/p>\n
Manglo\u00f1a also believes PSS should receive 25 percent of the CGRT. He said this year\u2019s CGRT is estimated at about $58 million and that PSS should receive $14.5 million, a quarter of the total amount.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said the PSS board is exhausting all available remedies in order to get what PSS is entitled to.<\/p>\n
\u201cPSS board chair Marylou Ada is going to write to the governor. Nobody is jumping or excited to help us in this issue but we definitely need to resolve this once and for all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased his recommendations in the past, perhaps the governor needs to seriously consider this and if he takes the opposing side, we can take it to the Supreme Court,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said that PSS\u2019 plan to file a certified question with the Supreme Court is still underway. <\/p>\n
PSS has been working to bring before the Supreme Court the principal question of \u201cwhat are the general revenues of the Commonwealth?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the governor still refuses to recognize the law and budget for PSS, we have other remedies. One is to sue him and in that lawsuit we can insert the certified question,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Board of Education member Herman T. Guerrero insists that the Public School System\u2019s share in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,65,40,139],"class_list":["post-266112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-house","tag-pss","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266112","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}