{"id":322072,"date":"2020-05-01T06:03:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T20:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=322072"},"modified":"2020-05-01T06:03:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T20:03:31","slug":"concerned-citizen-appeals-to-legislators-for-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/concerned-citizen-appeals-to-legislators-for-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerned citizen appeals to legislators for help"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Concerned citizen Peter Reyes Mu\u00f1a appeals to legislators behind a glass panel to look into the community benefit fund and\u00a0help the people of the CNMI during the\u00a0Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation Session\u00a0at the House Chamber\u00a0last Wednesday. (IVA MAURIN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A lone member of the community expressed frustration regarding the community benefit fund at the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation session last Wednesday, and appealed to legislators to help people by looking into this.<\/p>\n

Casino operator Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC is supposed to endow this fund but, according to Peter Reyes Mu\u00f1a, \u201cWhere is the $30 million? Nobody knows where it is. There are a lot of people suffering out there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really, really urgent. People are suffering and if you don\u2019t hear the suffering, then you should not be in there,\u201d he added. \u201cThese are our relatives, our cousins, our uncles. \u2026We have to help them. We really do.\u201d<\/p>\n

CBF is a contractual obligation of IPI, spelled out in the Casino License Agreement, as part of its contract with the CNMI government and the public. Of the $40 million that should have been put into the fund since 2018, only $3 million could be accounted for. With the CNMI in a fiscal crisis, the CBF money could have been used to benefit health care, public education, retirement benefits, and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is another way of what we call putin haga. Puro putin haga, they just streamline the whole thing. You guys are left to vote on it, and nobody knows about it. That is not right. Think about it,\u201d Mu\u00f1a said.<\/p>\n

He added that not only a few should have the privilege to receive all these things that are coming in from the casino. \u201cPeople are suffering and there\u2019s no reason for them to suffer. You\u2019re supposed to help the public. The public is the one who put you in there, and they\u2019re the ones who are [going to] vote for you, so help them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impassioned plea came after Mu\u00f1a asked the House to postpone the voting on the three nominees for casino commissioners\u2014Edward C. Deleon Guerrero, Rafael S. Demapan, and Mario Taitano\u2014stressing the necessity for ample time and due diligence in such decisions.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, no voting was made after the session got prematurely adjourned following an unannounced power outage. The next SNILD session is yet to be scheduled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lone member of the community expressed frustration regarding the community benefit fund at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322072","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\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}