{"id":376880,"date":"2022-09-30T06:04:54","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T20:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=376880"},"modified":"2022-09-30T06:04:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T20:04:54","slug":"torres-increasing-discretionary-budget-by-1-2m-lavish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/torres-increasing-discretionary-budget-by-1-2m-lavish\/","title":{"rendered":"Torres: Increasing discretionary budget by $1.2M lavish"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ralph DLG Torres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said Tuesday that to have the House of Representatives majority start attacking him and the Department of Public Safety for allegedly engaging in lavish spending of government money, they should look at themselves first for trying to increase their discretionary budget by $1.2 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they need something, when the family member needs an emergency who they\u2019re [going to] call? 911. Who is there to help? Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services, police officers and so forth,\u201d said Torres in response to a question during a press conference held in the governor\u2019s office conference room.<\/p>\n

Rep. Edwin K. Propst (D-Saipan) recently accused the Torres administration of lavish spending, including buying new cars for everybody at DPS in what he described as \u201ctoo many that he can\u2019t count all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Corina L. Magofna (Ind-Saipan) during a recent press conference also echoed Rep. Vicente C. Camacho\u2019s (D-Saipan) statement that Torres is spending government funds \u201clike there is no tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Torres asked if it is lavish when the administration has to update all the vehicles, to update their computers, and to do all for the departments to provide better services.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you provide better services if all your equipment is 20 years old, 10 years old, regardless what it is?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The governor said everyone needs to update their equipment in order to provide healthcare services, better public services, better 911, better emergency vehicles, and ambulances.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to upgrade all of our vehicles and update all our training for every government employee. Then you can ask for a better service,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Torres said he believes that the House majority\u2019s increase of $1.2 million is what\u2019s lavish because they cut all other services, and they increase their request on their own budget for discretionary.<\/p>\n

With respect to the budget bill for the government\u2019s operations for Fiscal Year 2023, the governor said he can\u2019t sign the legislation if it doesn\u2019t get to his table before today, Friday.<\/p>\n

He said he can\u2019t give credit to the House, but can give credit to the Senate for having a version of the budget that they pass within a month because they know how critical it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can I give the House credit for waiting almost five months for only the most important constitutional obligation of the Legislature which is to pass a balanced budget?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On the accusations by Camacho and other House majority members that he raised salaries of Cabinet members, Torres dared them to request for an Open Government Act so they can man up on what they\u2019re talking to the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust me, if there\u2019s one, they\u2019ll be happy to announce who. But for somebody from the legislature to just arbitrarily say, oh they\u2019re giving so much raise to the Cabinet, man up and mention who the Cabinet member is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With respect to American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, Torres said how the House acted is totally illegal because they have no authority to reprogram, program, or decide what percent to use to fund government personnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when you put 80% ARPA fund, and 20% local fund and you switch that around, that in itself is already an unbalanced budget,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n

Torres asked the House majority if they have the authority to reprogram Public Schools System\u2019s funds for federal programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy haven\u2019t they done that? Why have they done any other? Because they don\u2019t have the authority. So for them to arbitrarily say, well, we have the authority. They cannot have the authority,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The governor said assuming the Legislature passed a legislation to appropriate ARPA and it becomes a law, they cannot write to the U.S. Treasury a letter, a proposal, a description, saying they want to take this money and use it for this.<\/p>\n

\u201c It is the governor\u2019s office that has that authority,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n

He said if they don\u2019t have the authority to touch funds, reprogram or otherwise, then what their action shows that they did in fact reduce public health by $900,000 and so forth.<\/p>\n

Torres added that the legislature is included into the ARPA process, but to arbitrarily say that they have the authority and he does not, \u201cthat\u2019s not the right way, that\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said Tuesday that to have the House of Representatives majority start…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":376881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-376880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376880","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=376880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}