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EVS-TAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
House of Representatives floor leader Rep. Edwin K. Propst (D-Saipan) suggested Friday for the House to consider putting together a working group to address a possible $20-million shortfall this fiscal year, which he thinks is \u201cextremely alarming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t just accept this trend and expect a $20-million shortfall,\u201d said Propst during the miscellaneous portion of a House session.<\/p>\n
He cited a recent news article that quoted Rep. Ralph N. Yumul (Ind-Saipan) as saying during their previous session that the total amount of taxes and fees collected by the CNMI government in the first quarter of this fiscal year was short by $5.3 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is very alarming news,\u201d said Propst, adding that, as Yumul, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, had mentioned, if this collection trend continues and the government does not see more revenues coming in, they are looking at a possible $20-million shortfall this fiscal year.<\/p>\n
At this point, he said, they need to reach out to Gov. Arnold I. Palacios, the business sector, their Senate counterparts, and Senate President Edith E. DeLeon Guerrero (D-Saipan), to discuss how and what they are going to do, \u201cmoving on from here.\u201d<\/p>\n
To change the collection shortfall trend, Propst believes that everyone in the Legislature, including the minority leadership, has to fully work together. \u201cThis is just critical. The last thing what we want to see is more hours cut or jobs cut. People are hurt, our families are hurting,\u201d Propst said.<\/p>\n
He underscored the need to do everything to regain the CNMI\u2019s tourists. \u201cI say this because it seems almost a contrast to what we\u2019re seeing in Guam,\u201d Propst said.<\/p>\n
He said he has a friend who was passing through Guam and they couldn\u2019t even get a hotel room because they were full. \u201cWe\u2019re at 30% [hotel room] occupancy,\u201d the floor leader said.<\/p>\n
EVS-TAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
House of Representatives floor leader Rep. Edwin K. Propst (D-Saipan) suggested Friday for the House…<\/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-405966","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\/405966","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=405966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}