The House of Representatives bill to help pay the salaries of Tinian municipal employees is now law after Gov. Ralph DLG Torres signed House Bill 21-37 last April 29.<\/p>\n
The bill, introduced by Rep. Antonio SN Borja (R-Saipan), is now Public Law 21-1 and uses $1.2 million special casino gross revenue tax that was intended for Tinian. <\/p>\n
P.L. 21-1 allocates $1.09 million for personnel and operations, and public programs for the Tinian municipal government, the Tinian Municipal Treasury employees, the Tinian Casino Gaming Control Commission personnel and operations, and the Tinian Mayor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
An additional $60,000 will be used to buy one van for the Office of Aging under the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs-Tinian, while $25,000 each will be used to buy vehicles for the Department of Public Works-Tinian\u2019s Building Safety Division and the Department of Finance-Tinian.<\/p>\n
In a telephone interview with Saipan Tribune, Tinian Mayor Edwin P. Aldan said: \u201cWe really need that money for our employees in the municipality. The signing is very timely since our payroll will only last up to May 10. Without the bill being signed into law, it would have [meant] unpaid salaries, furloughs, and cut hours. Now that we have funding, it is welcome news to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that he is aware of the concerns raised by minority leader Rep. Edwin K. Propst (Ind-Saipan) and Rep. Tina Sablan (Ind-Saipan) when Borja\u2019s bill was being deliberated on the floor in the House.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe money will help make sure the employees will get paid\u2026and other obligations [are] covered.\u00a0The [money] was the share for Tinian from the CGRT.\u00a0We\u2019re re-obligating the money. We\u2019re taking away money from a project that was supposed to be ongoing,\u201d said Aldan, referring to paving of the Marpo Heights. \u201cThe project will push through and we\u2019re not going to abandon it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that they are still on target for the Marpo Heights project. \u201cThere\u2019s $2 million\u2026in capital improvement project [funds], which funds road, water, water, and other infrastructure projects. We\u2019re not abandoning the project and it will push through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House of Representatives bill to help pay the salaries of Tinian municipal employees is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298839","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}