{"id":394298,"date":"2023-06-21T06:04:01","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T20:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=394298"},"modified":"2023-06-21T06:04:01","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T20:04:01","slug":"house-oks-bill-to-address-govts-financial-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/house-oks-bill-to-address-govts-financial-deficit\/","title":{"rendered":"House OKs bill to address gov\u2019t\u2019s financial deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The House of Representatives unanimously passed yesterday a bill that members believe will address the CNMI government\u2019s financial deficit.<\/p>\n

All 17 House members present at a special House session voted \u201cyes\u201d to pass House Bill 23-56 that seeks to use the remaining 60% of the total of indirect cost revenue or reimbursement by fiscal year collected for each grant.<\/p>\n

The bill now goes to the Senate for action.<\/p>\n

Reps. Edwin K. Propst (D-Saipan), Diego Vincent F. Camacho (D-Saipan), and Julie Marie Atalig Ogo (Ind-Rota) were absent but excused from the session.<\/p>\n

Rep. Blas Jonathan T. Attao (Ind-Saipan) formally introduced the bill yesterday. Several other House members co-sponsored the legislation.<\/p>\n

Before voting on a motion to pass the bill, Attao thanked House members for allowing the legislation to be placed on the bill calendar for action.<\/p>\n

Attao said that, as they all know, the CNMI is facing a lot of financial challenges and if they don\u2019t start addressing those financial challenges or deficits, it will just continue to increase over the next couple of years.<\/p>\n

He said when the Office of Grants Management was first created in the 19th Legislature, they were able to obtain additional funds for the CNMI.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Blas Jonathan T. Attao<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, what we didn\u2019t realize back then was only 40% of those monies were being used. The other 60%…was never remitted to the Legislature for appropriation purposes,\u201d Attao said.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the intent of House Bill 23-56 is to make sure that those funds will address financial deficits, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more grants we get, the quicker we pay off these deficits that we we\u2019ve been inheriting over the last couple of years,\u201d Attao said.<\/p>\n

Should they ever exhaust the financial deficit, future House members can revisit this statute and will be able to address other pressing needs that they will be facing in the future, he added.<\/p>\n

In response to a question by Rep. Patrick San Nicolas (R-Tinian), Attao said the bill does not touch the CNMI budget whatsoever.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one will not touch any of our general fund or any local funds for that matter, but will be using indirect costs to address the financial obligations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Attao stated in the legislation that indirect cost reimbursements from grants provide a source of money for paying down the CNMI\u2019s budget deficit.<\/p>\n

He said 40% of those funds currently are directed to the Office of Grants Management. Attao said the remaining 60% is not currently directed for any specific program.<\/p>\n

He said the purpose of the legislation is to direct the remaining percentage of the total of the annual direct cost revenue or reimbursement from each grant to address the financial deficit.<\/p>\n

Under the legislation, the remaining 50% of the total direct cost revenue or reimbursement by fiscal year shall be deposited into a special account separated from the general fund and shall be utilized for the sole purpose of reducing the government\u2019s financial deficit.<\/p>\n

Such funds shall be without fiscal year limitation and under the expenditure authority of the Finance secretary.<\/p>\n

Rep. Vincent Aldan (Ind-Saipan) said a lot of people don\u2019t understand the significance of this bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill would literally help reduce the deficit. Right now our deficit is over $100 million. Our Gross Domestic Product if you compare that we\u2019re upside down. We are over 100% flipped upside down. We\u2019re technically broke,\u201d Aldan said. \u201cIt will help reduce the deficit that our children will not have to bear the costs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The House of Representatives unanimously passed yesterday a bill that members believe will address the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":394301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-394298","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\/394298","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=394298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}