Acting Department of Commerce secretary Joseph Santos Rios Jr. said yesterday that he is still wants to face the Senate Executive Appointments and Government Investigations Committee for his confirmation hearing. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am still here, so my intentions are moving forward,\u201d said Rios in a text message in response to Saipan Tribune\u2019s questions. <\/p>\n
He said \u201cif\u201d he did resign it\u2019s because for something that did not sit well with him, and \u201cif\u201d he did later reconsider or rescind his resignation, then it\u2019s because there \u201cmay\u201d have been a compromising solution or alternative. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhichever the case may be, I am still here,\u201d said the acting Commerce secretary. He did not elaborate.<\/p>\n
Senate EAGI Committee chair Sen. Celina R. Babauta (D-Saipan) said last night that they have not scheduled cthe onfirmation hearing for Rios and for other nominees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are prioritizing the budget at this time,\u201d said Babauta, referring to a legislation to revise the fiscal year 2023 budget upon the request of Gov. Arnold I. Palacios.<\/p>\n
The EAGI committee\u2019s confirmation hearing for Rios\u2019 appointment did not push through last March 28, after Oscar M. Babauta, who is the special assistant for the Palacios-Apatang administration, told the committee that Rios had asked to postpone the hearing as he is taking care of a pressing personal matter.<\/p>\n
Sources said Rios resigned as acting Commerce secretary just before his confirmation hearing, but then rescinded his resignation on or about the day of the hearing. <\/p>\n
Sources said Rios informed his staff during a meeting last March 23 that he had submitted his resignation letter to Palacios and that his last day in office would be March 31. However, sources said, Rios met his staff again on March 29 and told them he is not resigning after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Acting Department of Commerce secretary Joseph Santos Rios Jr. said yesterday that he is still…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":388716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388715","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\/388715","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=388715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}