Three retirees have opposed the pay increase of Settlement Fund trustee Joyce Tang that the U.S. District Court for the NMI had approved last week.<\/p>\n
David and Remi Sablan and Juan Manglona Sablan are opposing the pay raise because they claim not to understand the rationale behind it. The court earlier approved raising Tang\u2019s pay rate from $250 an hour to $350 an hour.<\/p>\n
In a letter to U.S. District Court for the NMI designated judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood, David and Remi Sablan said that Tang\u2019s reasoning for the pay raise is based on the positive growth of the stock market \u201c\u2026and that is not a rightful claim because the positive growth of the stock market is certainly not attributed to their legal expertise nor the results of their legal services to the Settlement Fund.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple added that Tang\u2019s services to the Settlement Fund at this time should be routine\u2014without innovative thinking nor creative legal services. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor the legal counsel to simply ask for a raise in pay is truly and simply greed and should not merit approval,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
The couple added that the staff at the office of the Settlement Fund administration should be able to operate smoothly doing daily routine work and periodic reporting to the court without a legal counsel\u2019s daily supervision.
\n\u201cSuch supervision is simply a financial drain to the Settlement Fund. It only shortens the financial lifespan of the Settlement Fund,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n
In Juan Manglona Sablan\u2019s letter to the court regarding the rate increase for Tang, he said the timing in requesting for an increase cannot be justified when private businesses and governments worldwide are experiencing financial hardship with substantial reduction of revenues due to the worldwide epidemic of COVID-19.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Juan Manglona Sablan said that there are retirees who have the financial background and management experience and can serve as a trustee for the Settlement Fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat person will make sure that he or she will do a good job because it affects his or her pension, too,\u201d he said.
\nHe noted that the Settlement Fund is paying 75% of the retirees\u2019 pension while the CNMI government pays 25%. \u201cWith the decrease of revenues due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CNMI government may have to reduce the 25%,\u201d he said.
\nTydingco-Gatewood approved the rate increase for Tang effective June 11, 2019.<\/p>\n
Recently, the court also approved Tang\u2019s request for compensation and reimbursement of expenses, saying they were reasonable.<\/p>\n
She ordered the Settlement Fund to pay Tang the sum of $108,890.40 for the trustee\u2019s invoices from December 2019 to July 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three retirees have opposed the pay increase of Settlement Fund trustee Joyce Tang that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":329907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[733],"class_list":["post-329853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-settlement-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329853","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}