CNMI Museum executive director Danny Aquino cites an administrative law in disputing a claim that he is an exempt employee and should not receive overtime pay for emergency services rendered following Super Typhoon Yutu in late October 2018.<\/p>\n
Aquino said that he and his wife, Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office field operations director Joann Aquino, are usually exempted from overtime pay. However, he said that, in times of emergency, the administration reserves the authority to pay them overtime. He cited 5 CFR 551.211(F)(2)(ii) for this.<\/p>\n
That law states that: \u201cRegardless of an employee\u2019s grade or equivalent level, the agency may determine that an emergency exists that directly threatens human life or safety, serious damage to property, or serious disruption of an activity, and there is no one other recourse other than to assign qualified employees to temporarily perform work or duties in connection with the emergency. In such designated emergency an exempt employee can become non-exempt for any work week in which the employee primary duties for the period of emergency work are non-exempt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Danny Aquino\u2019s primary duty is to run the CNMI Museum; however, he became involved in debris removal in response to Super Typhoon Yutu\u2019s devastation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was directly involved in debris recovery with the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office before the governor\u2019s directive on Jan. 24, 2019, during the governor\u2019s directive, and after the directive. I was assigned to the field\u2026working under the hot sun and extreme weather,\u201d Danny Aquino said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not spend the holidays with my mom or my family as originally planned before Super Typhoon Yutu caused catastrophic damage. Our home was destroyed [and] personal belongings, clothing, children\u2019s photos\u2014all were lost,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He noted that he and his crew, which are all CNMI Museum staff, worked at least six days a week to remove debris \u201cto restore some degree of normalcy to affected families\u201d around Saipan. \u201cI worked extremely hard and tried my best to load as many dump trucks efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aquino issued the statement in response to Rep. Edwin K. Propst\u2019s (Ind-Saipan) and Rep. Ivan A. Blanco\u2019s (R-Saipan) comments when the former blasted those who allegedly received their overtime paychecks ahead of others while also questioning those who received overtime pay while exempt, like Cabinet members.<\/p>\n
No access to timekeeping <\/strong><\/p>\n Danny Aquino further disputed the claim of being included on a list of people who allegedly received their overtime pay in advance. He noted that, in order to receive any overtime compensation from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, one must input Labor forms and FEMA forms on a daily basis.<\/p>\n He noted that time cards are certified and timesheets are prepared only through the timekeeper; documents forwarded are first inspected by another agency; approved timesheets are forwarded to the Finance Department for inspection and inputting; and that checks are printed depending on the availability of funds.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one has access to print their own recovery checks. In addition, we were paid the same time as all others from the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office and we are still waiting for other pay periods,\u201d Danny Aquino said, adding that Joann Aquino\u2019s overtime pay was one of the last five to be handed out in the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n Joann Aquino\u2019s role in the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office is to disseminate commands from the office to the teams through radio. She assists with coordinating the teams during the debris pickup efforts and even represents the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office during emergency meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CNMI Museum executive director Danny Aquino cites an administrative law in disputing a claim that…<\/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":[485],"class_list":["post-298166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298166","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=298166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}