Former lieutenant governor Diego Benavente has joined the Public School System as the agency\u2019s legislative consultant.<\/p>\n
State Board of Education chair Herman T. Guerrero confirmed Benavente\u2019s appointment yesterday during a board meeting.<\/p>\n
Benavente, who is also a former lawmaker, was hired through a special contract, the amount of which was not disclosed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a retired individual and therefore cannot be hired as an employee so it has to be through an independent or special contract,\u201d Guerrero told Saipan Tribune, adding that he is not privy to all the contract\u2019s details.<\/p>\n
Guerrero earlier said the legislative consultant\u2014a newly created position\u2014is directly under the office of Education Commissioner Dr. Rita A. Sablan.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune tried to interview Sablan yesterday but she was in a hurry for another meeting after emerging from the whole-day board meeting that ended past 5pm yesterday.<\/p>\n
As legislative consultant for PSS, Benavente\u2019s primary responsibility is to assist the system and the board in working with the Legislature on matters that affect public schools.<\/p>\n
Guerrero earlier told Saipan Tribune that the decision to tap the services of legislative consultant for public schools is to ensure that PSS\u2019 concerns on specific legislation and other related matters are properly conveyed to lawmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to figure out how we can talk more on one-to-one basis with our lawmakers to get something moved and accomplished within the Legislature. And that\u2019s basically the task we\u2019re expecting from the consultant,\u201d Guerrero had said.<\/p>\n
The board has a separate committee on legislative matters, chaired by board vice chair Lucy Blanco-Maratita. According to Guerrero, the hiring of a legislative consultant will not conflict with the work of this panel.<\/p>\n
He reiterated this yesterday, saying there are so many things to do both at the board level and PSS and both need help.<\/p>\n
PSS has also filled another position. Guerrero said that Tiberius Mocanu was hired as legal counsel for both PSS and the board and will assist current counsel, Adam Hardwicke. The new lawyer worked in government prior to joining PSS in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former lieutenant governor Diego Benavente has joined the Public School System as the agency\u2019s legislative…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-29160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29160","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\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}