{"id":376791,"date":"2022-09-29T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=376791"},"modified":"2022-09-29T06:00:59","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T20:00:59","slug":"relying-mainly-on-arpa-to-fund-personnel-costs-risky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/relying-mainly-on-arpa-to-fund-personnel-costs-risky\/","title":{"rendered":"Relying mainly on ARPA to\u00a0 fund personnel costs risky"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Victor B. Hocog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee chair Sen. Victor B. Hocog (R-Rota) said Tuesday that the House of Representatives\u2019 action of using 80% of the American Rescue Plan Act money to fund the personnel costs of the government\u2019s departments and agencies,\u00a0 places the CNMI government and its employees in a detrimental financial risk should ARPA funds become unavailable to fund such costs in the following years.<\/p>\n

In a slide presentation during the Senate\u2019s press conference in the Senate chamber Hocog said Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig stated that the House\u2019s action to cover personnel costs\u00a0 at 80% or ARPA funds as opposed to the 20% coverage \u201cis actually putting a hamper on the total availability for provisions of government for Fiscal Year 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n

The senator said therefore, the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee agreed to restore personnel costs funded at 20% ARPA, and 80% local revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what the Senate did is that they reversed the investment of funding to fund the operations of government and other agencies by putting back the 80% of local funds and revert back to 20% from ARPA to support other departments with their needs,\u201d Hocog said, referring to the Senate\u2019s unanimous passing of their budget version Friday.<\/p>\n

Sen. Vinnie F. Sablan (R-Saipan) in his presentation regarding the 25% retiree pension benefits, noted that the House allocated $13.6 million to fund the 25% retiree pension benefits despite their knowledge that Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and Finance Secretary Atalig acknowledged that funds have already been identified\u00a0 for the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2023 to cover the retirees pension benefits.<\/p>\n

Sablan said this would come from the community disaster loan to fund retirees pension benefits for FY 2023.<\/p>\n

He said the Senate, in line with the governor\u2019s commitment, ensures to continue supporting the retirees pension benefit.<\/p>\n

Sablan said through the reprogramming authority of the governor pursuant to the Commonwealth Code, the Senate is confident\u00a0 that every effort will be made to identify funds for the remaining three quarters of FY 2023.<\/p>\n

Sen. Karl King-Nabors (R-Tinian) said regarding full time employees funded under ARPA, the House eliminated 2,103 positions throughout the CNMI.<\/p>\n

King-Nabors said the biggest concern\u00a0 was the House\u2019s total disregard to properly identify\u00a0 which positions and salaries were cut.<\/p>\n

He said mayors of Tinian and Rota\u00a0 are left with no guidance as to which positions will no longer be available for renewal come Oct. 1, 2022.<\/p>\n

King-Nabors said furthermore, there is no clear indication on whether these cuts were only made to exempted service employees or civil service employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee chair Sen. Victor B. Hocog (R-Rota) said Tuesday that the House…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":376793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-376791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376791","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=376791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}