{"id":321023,"date":"2020-04-15T06:00:17","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T20:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=321023"},"modified":"2020-04-15T06:00:17","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T20:00:17","slug":"kilili-36m-now-available-to-the-cnmi-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/kilili-36m-now-available-to-the-cnmi-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Kilili: $36M now available to the CNMI government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON, D.C.<\/strong>\u2014A total of $36 million-plus is now available to the Commonwealth, as the government\u2019s share of the Coronavirus Relief Fund that Congress appropriated last month in the CARES Act.<\/p>\n<p>A special $3 billion set-aside for the U.S. territories and the District of Columbia was distributed by population with each territory receiving $702 per capita. States received an average of $424 per capita. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cCongress gave the U.S. Treasury 30 days to get this money out to state and territorial governments,\u201d said Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP). \u201cAnd [yesterday] Treasury\u00a0launched a new web portal where each eligible government can register to get the money sent electronically to its designated bank account. I understand that transfer takes about 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The CNMI has been allocated $36,284,217.70. Treasury will release about half of the money immediately and the rest by April 24 to meet the deadline set by Congress in the CARES Act, Public Law 116-136.<\/p>\n<p>Treasury has also set its own deadline for state and territorial governments to register for the Coronavirus Relief Fund grants. To ensure it can make payments within the 30-day period specified by the CARES Act, the department is requiring that those governments register and submit supporting documents by 11:59 EDT, April 17, or risk losing the money.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is also important to note that this is not a slush fund for state and territorial governors,\u201d Sablan said. \u201cThe money has to be used for coronavirus-related expenses that occurred after March 1 and that were unbudgeted. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cCongress intends that this money is used to keep people healthy and safe from the disease and help medical workers at the front line,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Sablan has been at work in Washington since early March to be on hand for negotiations on legislation addressing the coronavirus crisis and ensure the Marianas participates fully in the massive relief packages that Congress is passing. Direct aid to territorial governments was one of the four key priorities he identified for the CARES Act. He was also able to make those priorities the bipartisan consensus among all the island delegates. <\/p>\n<p>Sablan said that Democrats have already put forward a new proposal to double the CARES Act Coronavirus Relief Fund and allow state and territorial governments to use the money to replace lost revenues. But Senate Republicans blocked that additional aid on Thursday. (PR)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014A total of $36 million-plus is now available to the Commonwealth, as the government\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":320730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,1589],"class_list":["post-321023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321023","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\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}