Rep. Joseph Leepan T. Guerrero (R-Saipan) is opposing moves to increase the annual salaries of some employees under the Office of the Public Defender.<\/p>\n
Guerrero, speaking in last week\u2019s House of Representatives session, said this is a thing of concern. \u201cI\u2019m kind of concerned that we are at this stage and time where the CNMI cash flow is very short. And yet we continue to receive communication from the administration [about] increasing salaries for an assistant attorney general\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Governor\u2019s Communication 21-47, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres certified and allowed an annual salary of $60,000 for one assistant public defender\u2014which did not sit well with Guerrero.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now we see this for the Public Defender\u2019s Office again increasing another assistant public defender to $60,000? If this agency has the money, I think the governor should look into them and take that funding and use it to fill the shortfall of other agencies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said this is not the right time to increase salaries. \u201cIt is not right when everybody is hurting and we see a salary increase for lawyers that probably can share the same pain as everybody else,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Blas Jonathan T. Attao (R-Saipan) asked the Committee on Ways and Means, chaired by Rep. Ivan A. Blanco (R-Saipan), to look into this issue when they begin deliberations on the CNMI\u2019s fiscal year 2020 budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would to ask the\u2026committee\u2014when you start deliberating on the budget process\u2014to please review line by line on each and every employee\u2019s salaries. So we can determine if, in the future, after we adopt the fiscal year 2020 budget, we can trace which agency is subject to a request for an increase of salaries,\u201d said Attao.<\/p>\n
The committee\u2019s budget deliberations and hearings will soon begin after the House also passed House Concurrent Resolution 21-1 that approves the revenues and resources of the CNMI for fiscal year 2020, which begins on Oct. 1 this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rep. Joseph Leepan T. Guerrero (R-Saipan) is opposing moves to increase the annual salaries of…<\/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-299418","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\/299418","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=299418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}