{"id":324672,"date":"2020-06-11T06:02:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T20:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=324672"},"modified":"2020-06-11T06:02:23","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T20:02:23","slug":"house-panel-to-look-into-ag-opinion-on-yutu-overtimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/house-panel-to-look-into-ag-opinion-on-yutu-overtimes\/","title":{"rendered":"House panel to look into AG opinion on Yutu overtimes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Attorney General Edward Manibusan talks about the letter he sent to the Office of the Public Auditor in January, asking for a\u00a0review on the circumstances surrounding the payments made to government employees during Super Typhoon Yutu.\u00a0(IVA MAURIN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Office of the Attorney General has asked the Office of the Public Auditor to review the circumstances in which overtime payments were allegedly made to some CNMI government employees during Super Typhoon Yutu, as a House panel probes into the overtime payments made on operations under the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

This comes soon after the House Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster Related Funding initiated an investigation into COVID-19-related overtime payment requests.<\/p>\n

Speaking in an interview yesterday, Attorney General Edward Manibusan said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to be a transparent government, and you cannot have corruption in government. It\u2019s a no brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last January, the OAG issued an opinion to OPA on payments made to government employees during the Super Typhoon Yutu operations, the findings of which, once finalized, could provide guidance on the legitimacy of overtime payments made under COVID-19 operations. The letter asked the OPA to review the overtime payments made during Yutu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe office, being responsible for certain issues relating to the use of public funds, after having received concerns about the extraordinary pay that were given to certain government employees, I sent a letter to the Public Auditor to review the circumstances in which those payments were made,\u201d said Manibusan in his latest interview.<\/p>\n

In the case of the Yutu-related overtime payment, he explained that the three different tiers of government employees\u2014civil service, excepted service, and exempt employees\u2014are treated differently in terms of payment, either for overtime pay or for extraordinary payment,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re actually referring to this extraordinary payment of the 2.5. Each of this tier of employees is entitled to some kind of overtime pay, but with respect to extraordinary payment, there are certain of this tier that will be exempted from that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted the Office of the Public Auditor to review the law, as we found that to be inconsistent with what we thought was a payment, and so they\u2019re going to take a look at that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Manibusan also explained why his letter has not been made available to the public yet. \u201cWe have a professional code of responsibility that we have as lawyers and when we write legal opinion or things of that nature to another agency, that should be kept confidential until such time that it can be reviewed and made available to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concerns on funding<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a follow-up interview, House Special Committee chair Rep. Ralph Yumul (R-Saipan) affirmed that his office has received a copy of Manibusan\u2019s opinion that was sent to the Office of the Public Auditor.<\/p>\n

While Yumul cannot disclose the contents of the document, he said that there is a comment saying that there\u2019s no legal basis for the overtime. There is also no mention in the document that the governor did anything illegal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe committee now will review the letter, the opinion, and then we\u2019ll take steps now as to the payroll register that we requested, so we can see who was paid already, and if\u2026we\u2019re heading to that same repeat of history [this time with COVID-19 operations].\u201d<\/p>\n

Yumul said that his committee is concerned, especially with the budget coming up next year. \u201cThe CNMI is going to be faced with probably not a shortage but we\u2019re going to find the money to compensate all these employees that did work during the COVID days, and still are working right now,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re concerned about how do we fund this, the overtime and the extra pay if [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] decides not to reimburse us again. We don\u2019t know, but we\u2019d be preparing for that impact and we might have to start looking as to where we\u2019re [going to] find funding to cover this overtime and extra pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

No Cabinet member has been paid<\/strong><\/p>\n

Press secretary Kevin Bautista said in a separate interview that he has not received any official word that any Cabinet member has been paid out under COVID-19. Only the first responders from the quarantine sites, isolation facilities, and Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. are currently being paid, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s our understanding, and that we are ensuring that disaster pay for eligible employees, under the COVID-19 Task Force, Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., and any other auxiliary government agency that\u2019s involved in the COVID-19 response, will be paid out first,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Bautista said he did not submit a request for authorization for overtime. He disclosed, however, that he submitted a Category B form, or a log time sheet for hours worked, subject to FEMA approval and the timekeepers within the payroll department at the Governor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it ends up that our members are not going to get paid out of this, at the end of the day, it\u2019s for our understanding, given that getting the right, accurate, and true public information is such an important thing for this pandemic,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

As for the investigation being conducted by the House Special Committee regarding payments under COVID-19 operations, Bautista said that they will work with the Office of the Attorney General. \u201cWhat we intend to do is work with the [OAG] to ensure that we are in compliance with whatever stipulations have been made by the Office of the Attorney General, and the Office of the Public Auditor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom there, use that in terms of the depth determination of what\u2019s going to be paid out in terms of what is considered disaster pay, or COVID-19, pay for this definition of the pandemic,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Office of the Attorney General has asked the Office of the Public Auditor to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":324675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[68,65],"class_list":["post-324672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-ag","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324672","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=324672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}