The Office of Personnel Management said \u201cwithin-grade increases\u201d are still not allowed, warning that personnel actions for such benefit have been processed in violation of a 2001 suspension. OPA said that effective immediately, it will return any such personnel action to the originating department or agency because of the \u201ccontinued suspension of the benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese violations create an inconsistency in enforcement that cannot be allowed. The suspension of within-grade increases must be enforced until the governor determines and announces otherwise,\u201d acting Personnel director Joseph M. Pangelinan said in an April 7 memo to departments and activity heads.<\/p>\n
OPM also sent copies of the memo to Gov. Eloy S. Inos and the Legislature. Lawmakers said yesterday they have yet to read the memo.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan said OPM continues to receive requests for personnel action for employee within-grade increases, a subject that he personally discussed with the Civil Service Commission. CSC has been reviewing employee benefits.<\/p>\n
He said the commission pointed out that the within-grade increase is \u201cstill under suspension due to Governor Pedro P. Tenorio\u2019s determination in 2001 that there was insufficient public funding for WGIs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such determination has been continuously upheld and maintained by subsequent governors.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan, in his one-page memo, said Gov. Eloy S. Inos recently stated that the CNMI still does not have sufficient funding to restore within-grade increase benefit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccordingly, within-grade increases cannot be approved and processed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan said in OPM and CSC\u2019s review, they have noted that \u201csome personnel actions for WGIs have been processed in violation of the governor\u2019s suspension.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe suspension of WGIs must be enforced until the governor determines and announces otherwise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The continued suspension of within-grade increases applies to all Executive Branch departments, their subordinate activities, and all other activities that OPM services.<\/p>\n
OPM\u2019s Pangelinan added that approval of within-grade increases by the governor\u2019s office, Office of Management and Budget, or the Department of Finance \u201cdoes not override the governor\u2019s determination.\u201d<\/p>\n
In previous years, some lawmakers attempted to fund within-grade increases but the bills either failed to reach the governor\u2019s desk or if they did, they were vetoed.<\/p>\n
The Civil Service Commission, during its first meeting in 2014, noted the need to review personnel issues as the frozen annual within-grade increase and promotional increase programs and other matters within the Personnel Service Systems Rules and Regulations, among other things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of Personnel Management said \u201cwithin-grade increases\u201d are still not allowed, warning that personnel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[574,26,747,136],"class_list":["post-32379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-civil-service-commission","tag-cnmi","tag-csc","tag-opa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}