Gov. Ralph DLG Torres on Thursday issued the following response regarding the House of Representatives\u2019 rejection of the Senate\u2019s bill amendment to increase retiree bonuses to $1000:<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst off, I would like to thank the Senate for their immediate action after being informed of this issue, since the beginning. Further, I want to thank them for acknowledging the needs of the retirees in their decision to increase the bonus amount from $500 to $1000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe House was presented with the opportunity to give retirees a larger bonus in their session, but chose to reject the Senate\u2019s amendment. I am very disappointed at their decision to do that, especially because it has already been almost three months since the initial retiree bonus was supposed to come out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they really cared for the retirees, they would make this bonus happen for them because they are the appropriating branch of government. If you truly believe that this is political, please look at your own actions. You are holding back well-deserved bonuses for retirees who have worked hard for this Commonwealth because of your own political agendas and your own dislike for me as a governor. We may have our differences in opinions on how to spend funds, but I make the decisions that I make based on what is in the best interests of the people of this Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Senate saw fit that I\u2019d be given 100% reprogramming authority to ensure that the retiree bonuses would be fully funded and so that similar issues like this could be avoided in the future. Even after both my administration and the Senate offered viable solutions to address this issue, the House still did not agree. This is an important issue for all retirees, therefore, if they do not like the suggestions we have made, I urge the House to offer their own solutions. Let\u2019s just get our retirees their bonuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe retirees know that I have always made them a priority, and moving forward, I always will.\u201d (PR)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres on Thursday issued the following response regarding the House of Representatives\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":363012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-363011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363011","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\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}