I read with great interest the articles in today\u2019s newspapers about the governor\u2019s announcement to award \u201cCNMI retirees\u201d a $500 \u201cbonus\u201d for Christmas and to provide \u201ceach Commonwealth Utilities Corp. residential account holder a $500 voucher.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have a couple of questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Who is a CNMI retiree? The governor probably means those retirees receiving funds from the NMI Settlement Fund. But wait, he\u2019s using U.S. taxpayer dollars. I, like many others, am a U.S. taxpayer and a CNMI retiree, though I receive no funds from the Settlement Fund. Am I on the select list of \u201cCNMI retirees\u201d? I suspect that I am not but I also think a little clarity is in order.<\/p>\n
2. What exactly, is the source of this funding? In one article\u00a0the governor is reported as saying, \u201cWe put [these funds] aside and we worked on it [so that the] funds that we\u2019re using would not hamper any federal regulations.\u201d\u00a0I noticed that in the article he is not quoted as saying using the funds does not violate any federal regulation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are so many things that can\u2019t seem to get done in the CNMI because of funding issues or bureaucratic issues or political issues, but somehow the CNMI government can magically find $9.8 million to distribute to voters 11 months before an election. Just saying.<\/p>\n
John H. Davis<\/strong> I read with great interest the articles in today\u2019s newspapers about the governor\u2019s announcement to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":331239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1220],"class_list":["post-357205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-fina-sisu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357205","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\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFina Sisu, Saipan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"