\u2018My good friend, retired chief justice Jose Dela Cruz, expressed his views recently\u00a0criticizing the exclusive casino license legislation.\u00a0The\u00a0two of us\u00a0have argued back and forth\u00a0about the merits\u00a0of gambling here in the CNMI; and while I respect his opinion, I personally disagree with his view\u00a0that gambling is always bad for a community. It seems to me that if the gambling industry is well regulated and closely monitored, it can be a major source of revenue\u00a0for the community.
\nThe good judge says that the people have already spoken against having casinos on Saipan, and that\u2019s true. But that was many years ago, when the economy was in its heyday and the Retirement Fund was still \u201cin the black.\u201d But since then\u00a0we have seen the unfortunate demise of the Retirement Fund. It was on the verge of bankruptcy. Drastic measures had to be agreed to by the CNMI Government in the settlement agreement that was filed by the parties\u00a0in court. This was done\u00a0in order\u00a0to preserve the life of the Fund for the roughly\u00a03,000 members\u00a0who\u00a0have already retired. Their monthly pension had to be reduced by 25 percent, a\u00a0huge reduction for the members, some of whom now can no longer make ends meet.<\/p>\n
I believe\u00a0it\u00a0is the obligation of the CNMI government to make good on its promise to make the retirees whole, by removing the 25 percent pension reduction as it has promised, and in order to\u00a0comply with the terms of the Fund Settlement Agreement. But the only way to do this is by generating additional revenue, which\u00a0the CNMI Government does not have at the present.\u00a0If more revenue is generated through the casino license law, then there will be more disposable income for the retirees\u00a0to spend\u00a0on basic family needs. For now we need the revenue to be generated\u00a0from the casino license that will be issued under the new law.<\/p>\n
Maybe a compromise is in order.\u00a0I would like to suggest that\u00a0we proceed with the exclusive casino license but limit the term of the exclusive license to only\u00a030 years, with no option to renew. If after 30 years, the economy has improved where we don\u2019t need the revenue from the casino license, a sunset provision in the legislation will make the law expire on its own. Thereafter, any new casinos to be established shall be made only through a popular casino initiative voted upon by the people.<\/p>\n
Alexandro \u201cColonel\u201d Sablan<\/strong> \u2018My good friend, retired chief justice Jose Dela Cruz, expressed his views recently\u00a0criticizing the exclusive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[26,21,67],"class_list":["post-30705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-cnmi","tag-life","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30705","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=30705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDandan, Saipan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"