The short and easy answer is: If you see corruption happening, report it to the Office of the Public Auditor. <\/p>\n
That is the message of OPA legal counsel and director of investigation Ashley Kost, who assures the community that they take corruption matters seriously. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Office of the Public Auditor has a duty to detect fraud, waste, and abuse of government funds, and we cover the Government Ethics Act,\u201d said Kost. \u201cWe take our job very seriously, so any corruption that falls under that, we take it seriously and look into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
This comes soon as social media is dominated by allegations about Cabinet members getting overtime work for COVID-19 operation authorized, despite the thousands of government employees having been furloughed. Many cite the CNMI\u2019s experience after Super Typhoon Yutu in 2018, when rumors were rife about Cabinet members getting paid for overtime work.<\/p>\n
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres has made it clear that the documents are just authorizations, and have not actually been paid. Cabinet members are also not eligible for overtime. Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios said it himself, \u201cIn my full understanding of overtime regulations or laws, Cabinet members, being exempt employees, are not allowed to be paid overtime pay.\u201d <\/p>\n
This, however, has not stopped people from talking. Minority leader Rep. Edwin K. Propst (Ind-SIpan) was one of those who compared the same experience during Super Typhoon Yutu and now, under COVID-19, \u201cwe are seeing double pay for Cabinet members, which is even worse than overtime pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose connected are making huge sums of money, while those who are furloughed are still waiting for their unemployment assistance. How sad,\u201d Propst stated.
\nIn January, OPA received a letter from the Office of the Attorney General about overtime payments during Yutu. An audit on the case is ongoing; the investigations and findings have yet to be finalized. <\/p>\n
\u2018Nobody wants corruption\u2019<\/strong> Regarding the House of Representatives\u2019 Oversight Committee on Federal Assistance requesting access to payroll records, the governor asserted that everything is public record. \u201cWe never hide anything and we\u2019re not planning to hide anything. If anyone\u2019s concerned, it is public record. \u2026Any individual [who] wants to find any documents that the government has can go ahead and make the request and we will provide those documents,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Patrick Guerrero, the governor\u2019s authorized representative, is working with other agencies to put together information\u2014on overtime and contracts, among others\u2014to provide to the committee within the week. <\/p>\n According to Guerrero, he received three letters, one on May 28 asking for about 12 contracts the committee wanted to look into. The second letter, received on June 2, asked for a list of newly hired employees funded wholly or partially using funding from the CARES Act, FEMA, or other federal sources. <\/p>\n Guerrero said there has been no hiring under any FEMA program, and that he will reaching out to the Department of Finance who watches over CARES Act, as well as the Governor\u2019s Office, for concerns on other federal programs, to compile the list..<\/p>\n The third letter, received last June 4, is in relation to overtime costs, and a complete list of all government employees, and he will be working with the Homeland Security, to get the needed documents.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are transparent and we\u2019ll open the books and everything for them to view,\u201d Guerrero added.<\/p>\n Report what you know<\/strong> If it is in the OPA\u2019s purview\u2014fraud, waste, and abuse of government funds, and the Government Ethics Act\u2014they look into it to see if there is enough information, or if they have resources to look into it. Then OPA goes through its normal process, and take whatever steps are necessary for the investigation.<\/p>\n From there, Kost said, the case either gets closed because there is not enough information; gets handled administratively, which happens often when working with the government; or gets handled criminally.<\/p>\n \u201cAt that point, we refer it over to the Attorney General\u2019s Office for prosecution. If there\u2019s a federal nexus, we\u2019ll refer it over to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Kost stressed that OPA and all of its 17 employees are there to serve the public, and asked for everyone to help them do their jobs through tips and information. \u201cIf people are seeing something and they don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s an OPA\u2019s purview, we still would appreciate the tip coming in and if it doesn\u2019t fall in our purview, I\u2019ll make sure it gets to the right agency. Whether it be the AG\u2019s Office, Customs, or the FBI, I\u2019ll make sure it gets to the right place. \u201c<\/p>\n To give the OPA a \u201ctip,\u201d fill the form on their website, www.opacnmi.com. This means typing in your complaint anonymously, and getting the information straight to OPA. <\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot do our jobs, unless we get tips from the public so keep them coming. We\u2019re here for you, and if you want to talk, come up, and talk to us face to face, absolutely, you can come up here, we will meet with you,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The short and easy answer is: If you see corruption happening, report it to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":324454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324545","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=324545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cNobody wants to have corruption on the island or anywhere,\u201d Torres said in Monday\u2019s radio news briefing. <\/p>\n
\nInvestigation on corruption starts with a \u201ctip\u201d from either the OPA\u2019s tip line or the public, or through information OPA gathers from the news. All investigations from the tips that come in, until the dispositions of the cases, are confidential. <\/p>\n