Department of Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig said Friday that the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee\u2019s issuance of a subpoena to compel Finance to provide numerous reports or documents that the committee members have sought, is not necessary but still they will provide as much as they\u2019re able to.<\/p>\n
In response to Saipan Tribune\u2019s questions during KKMP press briefing, Atalig said he really believes that a subpoena is not necessary, as it is just a matter of having good communication between his office and the House Ways and Means Committee.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe committee decides to do things and acts on things without even consulting my office or the executive branch. So it is hard\u00a0 to know that they\u2019re asking\u00a0 and what they wanted to discuss,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Last Aug. 29, Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Donald M. Manglona (Ind-Rota) issued a subpoena on Finance acting secretary Margaret Bertha C. Torres to request for documents pertaining to several reports that have been promised during committee meetings, as well as fund status pertaining to some allocations that have\u00a0 yet to be transferred over to other government agencies.<\/p>\n
The committee requested a total of 28 items and gave Torres a deadline to submit those by today, Monday.<\/p>\n
It was Rep. Christina E. Sablan (D-Saipan) who offered the motion to issue the subpoena during the committee meeting last Aug. 17.<\/p>\n
Atalig said when the committee called to meet with them, he was not prepared because they were not communicating on what issues they wanted to discuss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary to do a subpoena for documents. Simple request to my office and direct communication go a long way in building that partnership\u00a0 in betterment of our finances for the CNMI,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Atalig said, however, they will submit something today, Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo a lot of these documents\u00a0 that they\u2019re asking will be forthcoming to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Department of Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig said Friday that the House of Representatives Ways…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":375742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375739","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=375739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}