Gov. Eloy S. Inos announced at yesterday\u2019s Republican Party kickoff rally that he signed Friday afternoon the bill legalizing casino gaming on Saipan and assured retirees that their 25 percent pension cut will be restored \u201cwithin 90 days,\u201d drawing cheers and applause from the crowd of hundreds. A bill amending the new law will be introduced as early as this week to address concerns about some problematic sections of the new statute.
\n\u201cPublic Law 18-38,\u201d the governor repeatedly said in his remarks at the GOP kickoff rally, with his running mate Senate President Ralph Torres (R-Saipan) also on stage, at the Susupe basketball courts yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n
But the 25 percent pension cut\u2019s restoration, along with payments of other Retirement Fund obligations such as payment of withheld interest of withdrawn contributions, will still depend on whether or not a casino investor pays a $1 million nonrefundable application, and makes $30 million in partial exclusive casino license fee payment soon. The amendment bill changes some of the major timelines.<\/p>\n
Inos said in a brief interview later yesterday that he signed the casino bill late Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
That was before heading out to his fundraiser and after his closed-door meeting with the Senate president and House Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan). The speaker said yesterday he wasn\u2019t aware that the bill was signed after their meeting on Friday.<\/p>\n
As of yesterday afternoon, the administration has yet to transmit to the Legislature a copy of the new law, which reportedly has several pages of a cover letter that spells out the governor\u2019s concerns about the casino legislation and why it needs to be amended.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically we want to make sure that rebate is clearly restored. There\u2019s some ambiguity in there [even with technical correction]. This one, we want to spell it out,\u201d Inos said, adding that restoring the pension cut is \u201camong many other things\u201d for signing the casino legislation.<\/p>\n
The governor, in his remarks in vernacular, also mentioned his desire to use portions of funds generated from the casino industry to help subsidize the so-called LEAC rate for residential customers of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. This will help lower CUC utility rates.<\/p>\n
House floor leader Ralph Demapan (Cov-Saipan), main author of the casino bill, said yesterday he\u2019s grateful for his colleagues\u2019 support in approving the revenue-generating bill and for the governor for signing it, with assurance from lawmakers that they will amend it to address the concerns from the general public and government officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain I am respectfully requesting my colleagues in the Legislature to support the amendment bill [that] I will be introducing this week, and this amendment bill is a product of working together among the House, Senate, and the administration and upon listening to the public\u2019s concerns,\u201d Demapan told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Demapan noted that the casino is just one aspect of the whole legislation, saying that the investor would still be required to invest a minimum of $2 billion on 2,000 hotel rooms and related facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure that if it\u2019s well regulated, the casino industry will help the economy in a major way for generations to come. I hope investors will step up to the plate and start applying for an exclusive license fee,\u201d he said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
The House and Senate passed the controversial casino gaming bill a day apart, about a month after Demapan prefiled it. The bill was not referred to a committee or went through public hearings. But Demapan said similar bills, including the last one shelved by the Senate late last year, underwent committee reviews and public hearings on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.<\/p>\n
It was the first time in at least four years that the Senate passed a casino bill from the House. Casino gaming used to be legal only on Rota and Tinian, home to the only operating casino in the CNMI\u2014Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino.<\/p>\n
GOP kickoff rally<\/strong><\/p>\n The Republican Party\u2019s kickoff rally began with a motorcade yesterday morning, followed by a roadside waving and then the program proper.<\/p>\n At almost 1pm, GOP officers, precinct chairpersons, and the endorsed candidates started coming up to the stage for presentation to the public.<\/p>\n The candidates are led by Inos and Torres as the GOP\u2019s official candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, in the November general elections. They were followed by candidates for Precincts 1 to 5 on Saipan, and then the Rota candidates before calling the Saipan senatorial and mayoral candidates.<\/p>\n The Tinian candidates will be announced at a later date, but Attorney General Joey Patrick San Nicolas, who is running for Tinian mayor, along with Lt. Gov. Jude U. Hofschneider who is running again for a Tinian senatorial seat, and Sen. Frank Cruz (R-Tinian) were also present at the kickoff rally.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a pretty good turnout,\u201d former Commonwealth Ports Authority executive director Roman Tudela said of the crowd.<\/p>\n The governor himself said he\u2019s \u201cvery pleased\u201d with the turnout.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really happy with the turnout as you can see, people are still excited about what\u2019s going on. A lot of these folks are volunteers and they showed up because they want to be a part of the solution. I\u2019m also very pleased with the candidates working hard, with their families. So I feel good. I feel better than before,\u201d Inos said.<\/p>\n GOP president James A. Ada said he\u2019s overwhelmed by people\u2019s participation in the kickoff rally.<\/p>\n On stage, after the governor\u2019s speech, Torres also briefly addressed the crowd.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to do the right thing,\u201d he said. He responded \u201cI love you guys and I love IT,\u201d after a member of the crowd said \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n The House floor leader, meanwhile, said that \u201cwe\u2019ve started the engine and we\u2019ll start shifting gears.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a start and we\u2019ll get to the finish line,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n GOP officers also called on stage representatives of different sectors, including from the Carolinian community, Filipino community, Palauan community, and women representatives.<\/p>\n But one of the most commanding speeches was from Matthew Deleon Guerrero, representing the youth sector.<\/p>\n He said the youths are coming out to support the Inos-Torres ticket and the rest of the GOP slate because they are \u201cthe party of solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re supporting them in this election because they want more solutions and less promises. We\u2019re supporting them in this election because we want leadership and not avoidance. We\u2019re supporting them in this election because we deserve solutions-driven leadership on the CNMI,\u201d he said, and the crowd applauded.<\/p>\n In closing, he said the youths \u201caren\u2019t just the future leaders of the CNMI; they\u2019re the leaders today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gov. Eloy S. Inos announced at yesterday\u2019s Republican Party kickoff rally that he signed Friday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,49,141,422],"class_list":["post-30592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-cuc","tag-gop","tag-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30592","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}