House of Representatives Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) is moving forward in creating a committee that will look into an ethics complaint filed against Rep. Edwin K. Propst (D-Saipan).<\/p>\n
In response to Saipan Tribune\u2019s inquiry yesterday, Villagomez said he is in the process of putting together the Ethics Committee that will be composed of seven members. \u201cHopefully it will be set by the end of the week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When asked for comments, Propst said that Villagomez had spoken to him about it. \u201cI welcome it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Grace \u201cPitu\u201d Sablan Vaiagae, who is a counselor and an advocate for the rights of abused women, filed the ethics complaint against Propst last Nov. 9 over allegations that he had sex with several underaged women approximately 20 years ago when he was still a teacher at Marianas High School and an employee at the Northern Marianas College. Propst has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
Propst earlier stated that the complaint \u201cis obviously a distraction\u201d from the NMI Republican Party and Gov. Ralph DLG Torres on the House Judiciary and Governmental Operations Committee\u2019s investigation into the governor\u2019s expenditures of public funds and travels.<\/p>\n
Villagomez said his intention is to have this Ethics Committee formed and kept for the rest of the 22nd Legislature\u2019s term so that if any other ethics complaint arises, they already have a committee for it.<\/p>\n
This is the second time these allegations against Propst came up. No Ethics Committee was formed during the 21st Legislature regarding the same complaint against Propst after the latter resigned from his position as Precinct 1 House representative on Oct. 1, 2020. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
House of Representatives Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) is moving forward in creating a committee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":346080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356792","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\/356792","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}