Sen. Edith E. DeLeon Guerrero (D-Saipan) has introduced a bill that seeks to remove Department of Public Lands\u2019 obligation to pay land compensation judgments. <\/p>\n
DeLeon Guerrero stated in Senate Bill 22-76 that the Commonwealth Code provides that DPL pays its debts, liabilities, obligations, operational expenses, including land compensation judgments, from its Operations Fund bank account. <\/p>\n
The senator said the court has ruled that land compensation cannot be paid from the revenues generated from the management and disposition of public lands.<\/p>\n
However, she said, land compensation for the expansion of water and wastewater systems is authorized using American Rescue Plan Act funds under the CNMI 2021 Recovery Plan Performance Report.<\/p>\n
DeLeon Guerrero said the purpose of her bill is to amend 1 CMC Section 2803(c ) to remove the payment of land compensation judgments by DPL.<\/p>\n
In response to Saipan Tribune\u2019s inquiry, the senator said that the proposed legislation will only affect cases moving forward.<\/p>\n
She said her reading of the recent Marianas Public Lands Trust \u2018s annual report and discovery of ARPA funds set aside for land compensation prompted her to introduce the bill.<\/p>\n
DeLeon Guerrero said DPL funds for their operational expenses are primarily sourced from public land lease revenue collectively owned by those of Northern Marianas descents. <\/p>\n
She said the savings clause provides the protections for prior land compensation judgments and should not be affected by the proposed bill. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Edith E. DeLeon Guerrero (D-Saipan) has introduced a bill that seeks to remove Department…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":364763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-369426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-dpl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369426","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=369426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}