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<\/p>\nFurther movement on a House bill that seeks to write off the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s debt with the erstwhile Commonwealth Development Authority has stalled after a House committee that\u2019s looking into the measure decided to table the bill pending future discussions.<\/p>\n
This comes soon after House of Representatives legal counsel John Bradley pointed out that CDA, now known as the Commonwealth Economic Development Authority, believes that there is no longer any loan debt. He said he learned this from CEDA itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t exist because they settled,\u201d he said, referring to the CDA-CUC settlement.<\/p>\n
House Bill 23-52 which the House of Representatives Public Utilities, Transportation, and Communications Committee was looking at, seeks to impose a settlement on that CUC debt by writing it off.<\/p>\n
Bradley said, however, that that debt doesn\u2019t exist anymore as CEDA very expressly stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo even if you pass this bill, as it\u2019s written, it would not accomplish what you want. It would be simply eliminating a debt that doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n
He said the bill essentially would do nothing because the debt was resolved by converting it to shares in CUC, which Bradley thinks is a \u201cvery odd\u201d arrangement. Bradley stated at the hearing that such an arrangement raises other legal issues that they don\u2019t need to discuss that day.<\/p>\n
It was Rep. Blas Jonathan T. Attao (Ind-Saipan) who asked Bradley to chime in on the 2004 CUC-CDA settlement because the lawyer was part of the previous PUTC\u2019s conversation with CEDA in regards to ownership of CUC dividends.<\/p>\n
The CDA-CUC settlement arose during discussions on H.B. 23-52.<\/p>\n
The PUTC chaired by Rep. Vincent S. Aldan (Ind-Saipan) agreed to table H.B. 23-52 after Attao suggested that they should hold off on the legislation right now so they can have a meeting with CEDA, CUC, and even the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., plus a central government representative.<\/p>\n
With CUC\u2019s loan converted into shares that are now held by CEDA, that means CEDA now has an ownership stake in CUC and is receiving dividends.<\/p>\n
If the PUTC and the House as a whole is interested in how to address the shortage of payments to CUC by various government agencies, the money is no longer sitting as a loan. He said the money is streaming as paid dividends from CUC to CEDA and some of that money has already been distributed in various ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them was to send some money over to help with the NMC [Northern Marianas College] and other important projects. So that\u2019s where the money is if you\u2019re looking for it,\u201d Bradley said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Blas Jonathan T. Attao<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
John Bradley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Further movement on a House bill that seeks to write off the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s…<\/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-402595","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\/402595","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=402595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}