A House committee is looking to hold a public hearing this week for a Senate bill that seeks to extend the maximum initial lease terms.<\/p>\n
In an announcement last week, the House Committee on Natural Resources led by Rep. Alice Igitol (R-Saipan) said that Senate President Arnold I. Palacios\u2019 (R-Saipan) Senate Bill 20-35, which seeks to bump up the maximum initial lease term of 25 years to 40 years, was up for public comments last night, June 4, on Capital Hill.<\/p>\n
The bill was adopted by the committee at their May 18 meeting with a vote of 4-3, with Rep. Donald Barcinas (R-Saipan), Rep. Edmund Villagomez (Ind-Saipan), and Rep. Jose Itibus (R-Saipan) voting against its passage without a public hearing.<\/p>\n
An even earlier committee meeting vote on the bill resulted in a stalemate of 3-3.<\/p>\n
According to a previous interview with House Speaker Rafael Demapan (R-Saipan) on the bill, the House opted to defer action on Tinian.<\/p>\n
He added that conducting a public hearing was solely the prerogative of the committee it was referred to, in this case the Natural Resources Committee.<\/p>\n
In a previous Senate session in August 2017, S.B. 20-35 garnered unanimous Senate support.<\/p>\n
Last night\u2019s public hearing solicited the testimonies of the mayors of Saipan and Northern Islands; the Saipan Municipal Council; Carolinian Affairs executive assistant; the Northern Marianas Descent Corp. president; Department of Public Lands; the Indigenous Affairs Office resident executive; a representative of the Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands; the Saipan Chamber of Commerce; the Office of the Attorney General; the Marianas Visitors Authority; and the Matua Council for Chamorro Advancement president.<\/p>\n
Members of the public were also encouraged to submit written comments through email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A House committee is looking to hold a public hearing this week for a Senate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2626,14696,8457,7911],"class_list":["post-277449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attorney-general","tag-house-committee","tag-natural-resources-committee","tag-saipan-chamber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277449","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=277449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}