No actual injunction that seeks to force the CNMI government to give the Public School System more money has been filed against the CNMI government yet. <\/p>\n
This was learned during a regular board meeting yesterday, when the PSS legal team informed the Board of Education that, so far, what\u2019s been filed is just a lawsuit or complaint that the government is not paying what\u2019s due PSS, which is 25% of the CNMI\u2019s revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo actual injunction was filed. Simply filing a lawsuit and asking that an injunction be issued doesn\u2019t create an injunction,\u201d said PSS legal counsel Tiberius Mocanu. <\/p>\n
He explained that an injunction is a remedy that you would ask the court for and happens when you ask the court to do something. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, when we filed the lawsuit and asked for injunctive relief, we asked that the court order Secretary of Finance David Atalig and Gov. Ralph DLG Torres to cease payments under Public Law 21-08, which was the budget for this fiscal year,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
However, to file an injunction, PSS had to present to the court that there would be irreparable harm had the payments continued to occur in violation of what the Supreme Court\u2019s opinion said, he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cConsequently, before [the injunction] was filed, the Public School System closed its schools on account of COVID-19, so our irreparable harm that we would\u2019ve sought as the basis of our injunction was gone. We would\u2019ve argued that the closure of schools and the discontinuance of education on account of not receiving what we were owed would\u2019ve caused irreparable harm,\u201d Mocanu said. <\/p>\n
Mocanu is currently working with his staff to complete and file a motion for summary judgement to move forward with the lawsuit that was filed in the first week of April. <\/p>\n
\u201cA motion for summary judgement proves there are no disputes on what the facts are. In our case there are none. We can all agree with the numbers that the Department of Finance has and what the appropriations to PSS and to other agencies are. We\u2019re simply arguing that the interpretation of the certified question applies to this fiscal year, thus changes the formula that should be implemented, thus giving PSS more money,\u201d Mocanu explained. <\/p>\n
Yesterday, board members Marylou Ada, Andrew Orsini, and Phillip Mendiola-Long voted to re-affirm the lawsuit and file the motion for summary judgement. Board chair Janice Tenorio and vice chair Herman Atalig voted against filing the summary judgement. <\/p>\n
Tenorio suggested that her colleagues consider revisiting the lawsuit and to defer it to a later time. \u201cLet\u2019s go back to the table instead of taking this to court. I really believe in sitting down and working out things. Defer the lawsuit until our government can get on their feet,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No actual injunction that seeks to force the CNMI government to give the Public School…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-321984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321984","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}