U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked about the $21.7 million out of $36.3 million in Coronavirus Relief Funds available for the CNMI and expiring on Dec. 31, 2021, according to Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP).<\/p>\n
When asked about this, Gov. Ralph DLG. Torres said yesterday the Department of Finance will have a response.<\/p>\n
Sablan wrote Torres last Wednesday to tell him about Pelosi bringing to his (Sablan) attention the expiring COVID-19 relief funds. The delegate said that Pelosi asked him (Sablan) for the governor\u2019s expenditure plan for these funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be a tremendous loss to the Commonwealth if you were unable to spend all the relief aid Congress has provided you,\u201d Sablan told Torres.<\/p>\n
He said future funding will be more difficult to obtain if the CNMI government has a track record of not fully utilizing the money allocated to money.<\/p>\n
The delegate asked Torres to provide him with his plan of expenditure for the remaining $21.7 million of Coronavirus Relief Funds, so that he can give that information to Pelosi and ensure that this federal aid continues.<\/p>\n
The delegate said the CNMI was originally awarded $36.3 million from the CARES Act, U.S. Public 116-136, which was enacted in March 2020.<\/p>\n
He said the funds are to be used for unbudgeted expenditures incurred due to the COVID-19 public health emergency during 2020.<\/p>\n
Yet as of Sept. 30, 2021, Torres had only spent $14.6 million or 40.2% of his original allotment, according to the data collected by the federal Pandemic Oversight agency, Sablan said.<\/p>\n
By comparison, the Guam governor has spent all that territory\u2019s Coronavirus Relief Fund allotment, Sablan added.<\/p>\n
He said the American Samoa governor had used 90% as of Sept. 30, 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Commonwealth is lagging far behind,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n
He also noted that, in reviewing the list of businesses and government agencies that shared in the $14.6 million that Torres did spend, he does not find the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., which had significant, unbudgeted expenses during the initial year of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The delegate said the Public School System too would have had significant, unexpected expenses as students and teachers transitioned to working from home during that period of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet none of the $36.3 million at your disposal seems to have gone to education,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked about the $21.7 million out of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":335538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-357105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357105","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=357105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}