{"id":387129,"date":"2023-03-13T06:06:08","date_gmt":"2023-03-12T20:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=387129"},"modified":"2023-03-13T06:06:08","modified_gmt":"2023-03-12T20:06:08","slug":"corrections-doubles-down-on-austerity-measures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/corrections-doubles-down-on-austerity-measures\/","title":{"rendered":"Corrections doubles down on austerity measures"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Anthony Torres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The new acting Department of Corrections commissioner is doubling down on austerity measures at the department in hopes of saving the government over $40,000 each month.<\/p>\n

With the department reportedly overspending its budget by over $1.6 million last fiscal year, acting Department of Corrections commissioner Anthony Torres aims to implement strict cost-cutting measures to save money for the government while ensuring his staff don\u2019t lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s challenges and concerns, but I\u2019m well aware and I\u2019m doing my best to address them. I\u2019ve done some things that were probably unpopular, but I needed to do them to address our budget issues. I don\u2019t want to have to let people go. I want people to keep their jobs. I\u2019m thinking of my staff as well as ensuring their safety as well as the safety of our inmates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

DOC currently has over 200 personnel and most of these officers were accumulating over 100 hours in overtime by working 12- to 16-hour shifts under the previous leadership. Torres said he hopes to address this by launching another corrections academy as well as buckling down on overtime hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you can see, we are in dire need of an academy to get started. I know with the budget and cost-cutting measures, [it\u2019ll be hard]. In my first few weeks at DOC, I took it into my own hands and I\u2019ve restricted overtime to shift operations only. This means sergeants and above are required to get approval from me on overtime. Even then, I will only grant it if it\u2019s absolutely necessary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the overtime situation, I\u2019ve tasked a scheduling committee to devise a plan to decrease the overtime for our line officers. That\u2019s coming soon. We\u2019re looking at over 38 hours in overtime for each officer dropping down to six to eight hours with the limited staff we have now,\u201d Torres added.<\/p>\n

On top of cutting back on overtime, the acting commissioner has also grounded most of DOC\u2019s vehicles and is lifting non-contact visitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve grounded 80% of our vehicles. With programming as well, this week I\u2019m going to start lifting visitation for non-contact. It took me time to get there because there were security concerns I wanted to address. The first two days of walking the facility there were a lot of concerns so I did everything in my power to get a team together to address those issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Overall, with the cost-cutting measures he will implement, Torres hopes to save the government over $40,000 each month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting really creative and thinking outside the box to save our government some money. With the cost-cutting measures we are putting in place, we\u2019re looking at saving our government over $40,000 a month in expenditures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new acting Department of Corrections commissioner is doubling down on austerity measures at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":387130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387129","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\/387129","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}