The House Special Committee on Fiscal Review of Executive Expenditures will begin the investigation into Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 executive expenditures as well as his recent Northern Islands trip next week. <\/p>\n
According to committee member Rep. Tina Sablan (D-Saipan), the committee is set to discuss subpoenas that the committee will issue to various government agencies involved in the investigation of executive expenditures next Thursday. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to discuss the subpoenas the committee was going to be asked to vote on so we need a majority vote to issue a subpoena. We had a number of subpoenas we were going to request for Finance and for other agencies that have been involved,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Additionally, on the minority\u2019s side, Sablan said they asked the committee to obtain records related to Torres\u2019 recent Northern Island trip involving multiple agencies. That would involve Finance, the Department of Public Safety, the Marianas Visitors Authority, the Northern Islands Mayor\u2019s Office, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the Division of Fish and Wildlife. \u201cThere may be others but that\u2019s just the start,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The minority also wants the committee to obtain records related to Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC\u2019s community benefit fund, over which Torres has enforcement authority under the casino license agreement. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe in the minority have filed an Open Government Act request on the community benefit fund with the governor\u2019s office back in February and the record that we got only account for a very small fraction of what should have been paid into this fund by Imperial Pacific International. What we are proposing is that we get those records directly from Imperial Pacific International and also from the Casino Commission on some of the documents that were withheld or redacted by the governor\u2019s office,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The committee was set to act yesterday but, due to technical issues on their website, the committee was unable to act on anything and postponed the meeting. Instead, the committee had a briefing on the legislative subpoena process and what the statute says about the committee\u2019s powers as an investigative committee. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t have an official committee meeting\u2026because, unfortunately, we learned that the notice that should have gone out so that the public would know about this meeting did not go out. Usually, we publish these notices of our meeting on our website but the server has been down for a number of days, so it didn\u2019t come out until today but we needed it to be issued at least 72 hours ago to be in compliance with the Open Government Act. \u2026To be on the safe side, we decided not to take action,\u201d Sablan said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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