{"id":397397,"date":"2023-08-22T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=397397"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Palacios-has-no-problem-with-no-BGRT-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Palacios-has-no-problem-with-no-BGRT-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"Palacios has no problem with no BGRT hike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As long as the CNMI government\u2019s budget for fiscal year 2024 is balanced, Gov. Arnold I. Palacios has no problem with the Legislature passing a budget legislation that removes his proposal to increase the Business Gross Revenue Tax in order to raise an additional revenue of $9.1 million.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at a news briefing last week, Palacios said that, if the Legislature decides on another option rather than increasing the BGRT in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, that\u2019s certainly a legislative prerogative.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI proposed the budget. That was my proposal to come up with a balanced budget to minimize the expenditure cuts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Last Aug. 10, the House of Representatives passed a bill that proposes a $115.4-million budget for the CNMI government for fiscal year 2024. The legislation does not include the administration\u2019s proposal to increase BGRT.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Donald M. Manglona (Ind-Rota) has yet to file its version of the budget.<\/p>\n<p>Palacios said it would have been easy to propose a budget without a proposal to increase the BGRT, but there would be \u201ca lot of impacts on people\u2019s life\u201d such as 64 work hours for government employees rather than 72, and a cut in the insurance coverage for employees.<\/p>\n<p>The governor said the Legislature may come up with a different proposal to cover the $9-million shortfall. <strong><em>(Ferdie de la Torre)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/images\/imgupload\/5e27ce95b930fbe20ad48e69dd4c0cf0.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Arnold I. Palacios<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As long as the CNMI government\u2019s budget for fiscal year 2024 is balanced, Gov. Arnold&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397397","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}