{"id":303002,"date":"2019-07-08T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-07T20:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=303002"},"modified":"2019-07-08T06:00:19","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T20:00:19","slug":"blanco-mplt-bill-on-15-million-loan-needs-15-yes-house-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/blanco-mplt-bill-on-15-million-loan-needs-15-yes-house-votes\/","title":{"rendered":"Blanco: MPLT bill on $15 million loan needs 15 \u2018yes\u2019 House votes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since it addresses a constitutional issue, the bill that would authorize the Torres administration to secure a $15-million from the Marianas Public Land Trust would require 15 \u201cyes\u201d House votes, according to House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Ivan A. Blanco (R-Saipan)<\/p>\n

\"\"
Blanco<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He is confident, though, that the bill, authored by House Speaker Blas Jonathan Attao (R-Saipan), will secure enough votes at the next House of Representatives session to pass.<\/p>\n

Fifteen \u201cyes\u201d votes translate to two-thirds of the House. <\/p>\n

In an interview last week, Blanco said that everybody from both the majority and the minority sides feels that the MPLT funding can immediately jumpstart the economy.<\/p>\n

Attao\u2019s House Bill 21-44 pledges as security the interest income distributions from MPLT. It also authorizes the MPLT to withhold and to retain net annual distributable interest income starting fiscal year 2020 and beyond as necessary. It creates a credit facility to address bond obligations and retirement settlement fund payments.<\/p>\n

The MPLT board has chosen to use the term \u201cloan\u201d instead of \u201cline of credit\u201d and set the interest rate at 7.5%, to be paid in five years. That means Attao will need to amend his bill to change the term \u201cline of credit\u201d to \u201cloan\u201d to reflect what the MPLT is more comfortable with. The Torres administration earlier referred to the amount it was seeking as a \u201cline of credit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last Friday, Attao set a special session for today, Monday, at 2pm, and H.B. 21-44, was among the items on the calendar. The speaker later cancelled the session mid-weekend; he did not indicate the reason for the cancellation.<\/p>\n

House\u2019s records, however, showed that four representatives\u2014Richard Lizama, Ralph Yumul, Marco T. Peter, and Christina Marie E. Sablan\u2014are either currently off-island or will be going off-island starting today, Monday, for personal and business reasons. The four earlier asked to be excused from all meetings or sessions.<\/p>\n

Blanco is confident that the bill will easily pass in the House and go to the Senate as there are vendors that have not been paid and frontline workers that are still waiting for their partial payment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we infuse the money to the economy comes back as [business gross revenue tax]. It recycles,\u201d Blanco said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since it addresses a constitutional issue, the bill that would authorize the Torres administration to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":303003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-303002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303002","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}