{"id":365100,"date":"2022-03-28T06:05:55","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T20:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=365100"},"modified":"2022-03-28T06:05:55","modified_gmt":"2022-03-27T20:05:55","slug":"villagomez-says-disagreement-with-senate-not-about-political-posturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/villagomez-says-disagreement-with-senate-not-about-political-posturing\/","title":{"rendered":"Villagomez says disagreement with Senate not about political posturing"},"content":{"rendered":"

House of Representatives Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) said their disagreement with the Senate about legislation for the government retirees\u2019 $1,000 bonuses is not about political posturing nor about getting credit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI disagree. Plain and simple,\u201d said Villagomez when asked during the House\u2019s press conference Tuesday about Sen. Victor B. Hocog\u2019s (R-Rota) statement that what he is seeing regarding the disagreement on bonuses is political posturing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not about credit because even if we were to put the H instead of the S, it\u2019s still not the proper way to do it. It needs to go through legislation,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\"\"
Villagomez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The speaker said appropriations can only start from the House, so they already have bills for the bonuses. He said they introduced a bill and passed it and then the Senate amended it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd again, we opened up the table. Come and meet in the middle and let\u2019s iron out our differences,\u201d said Villagomez, referring to his appointment of conferees.<\/p>\n

Nor is this about political posturing, he said, because if it is, why not just pass it before Christmas of 2021?<\/p>\n

He reiterated that they want to do things the right way. \u201cIt is important that the retirees out there understand [Commonwealth Code] Section 7402 that we are trying to do things the right way and also try to protect them, so that when they receive this $1,000, they don\u2019t need have to worry about any legal issues,\u201d Villagomez said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Sheila J. Babauta (D-Saipan) reiterated this, saying they want to do it the right way. \u201cThere is a proper way to do it so that we are following the law and the House is focused on that,\u201d Babauta said.<\/p>\n

Last March 10, the Senate unanimously adopted Senate Joint Resolution 22-09 approving Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 request to create a new program and business unit for the government retirees\u2019 bonuses. The resolution, authored by Senate President Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian) and five other Republican senators, also approves Torres\u2019 request to reprogram $2.8 million from within the Executive Branch for the payment of the retirees\u2019 bonuses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House of Representatives Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) said their disagreement with the Senate about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":363142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365100","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\/365100","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=365100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}