{"id":266367,"date":"2017-12-13T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=266367"},"modified":"2017-12-13T06:00:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T20:00:48","slug":"committee-starts-review-torres-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/committee-starts-review-torres-recommendations\/","title":{"rendered":"Committee starts review of Torres\u2019 recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_266386\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-266386\" style=\"width: 554px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Angel-Demapan-2013.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"554\" height=\"663\" class=\"size-full wp-image-266386\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-266386\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Demapan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_266387\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-266387\" style=\"width: 665px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Ralph-Deleon-Guerrero-Torres-2010.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"665\" height=\"750\" class=\"size-full wp-image-266387\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-266387\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Torres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The House Ways and Means Committee is starting its review of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 recommendations for the allocation of the Saipan casino gross revenue tax collection.<\/p>\n<p>With a total of over $38.5 million up for appropriation, only $16.55 million would be appropriated due to a $22-million earmark provision in recently enacted Public Law 20-10.<\/p>\n<p>The $22 million would be held in a special account to pay for this year\u2019s retiree pension bonuses and 25 percent of pensions that were withheld from government retirees.<\/p>\n<p>Of the $16.55 million that is up for allocation, Torres recommends that $2 million of that go to the Public School System.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview with Saipan Tribune that Torres\u2019 communication is merely a recommendation of how the money should be divided and his committee need not follow Torres\u2019 recommendations word for word.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe owe PSS some $9 million from\u2026previous appropriations we\u2019ve enacted, so I\u2019d like to see that we give that particular amount to PSS and then work on an additional $3 million to help support some of the unfunded obligations they are requesting for,\u201d said Demapan.<\/p>\n<p>Previous appropriations from the House\u2014House Bill 20-108 that addressed salaries owed government employees that got stuck at Step 12; House Bill 20-103 that addressed the land compensation debts of the CNMI government; and House Bill 20-116 that addressed the balances the CNMI government owed the settlement fund for fiscal year 2014 and fiscal year 2015\u2014appropriated over $36.6 million altogether.<\/p>\n<p>The CNMI Constitution provides that PSS is entitled to 25 percent of \u201cgeneral revenues,\u201d which include all appropriations allocated by the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p>A quarter of $36.6 million is a little over $9 million\u2014the amount Demapan infers is owed PSS.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt this time, I\u2019m working on reconfiguring the proposed distribution to see how best we can accommodate PSS\u2019 request in the amount of $12 million,\u201d said Demapan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The House Ways and Means Committee is starting its review of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":266386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,19436,19437,40],"class_list":["post-266367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-house-house-bill","tag-means-committee","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266367","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}