{"id":407708,"date":"2024-04-11T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=407708"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Senate-passes-bill-to-appropriate-5-2M-to-pay-retirees-25-pension-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Senate-passes-bill-to-appropriate-5-2M-to-pay-retirees-25-pension-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate passes bill to  appropriate $5.2M  to pay retirees\u2019 25%  pension benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate unanimously passed late afternoon yesterday a bill that will appropriate $5.2 million of the dividends collected by the Commonwealth Economic Development Authority from the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. for payment of the 25% pension benefits for all government retirees.<\/p>\n<p>All nine senators adopted during an emergency session the amendments to the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee report that recommends the passage of House Bill No. 23-104, HD1, SD1.<\/p>\n<p>All nine senators subsequently voted \u201cyes\u201d to pass the legislation.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian) made the floor amendments to the committee report to correct some errors, but Sen. Celina R. Babauta (D-Saipan) questioned whether Hofschneider can offer the amendments considering he is not a member of the committee.<\/p>\n<p>To stop the argument, Sen. Paul A. Manglona (Ind-Rota) co-sponsored the floor amendments.<\/p>\n<p>The senators then adopted the amendments and subsequently passed the legislation.<\/p>\n<p>The House fast-tracked the passage last March 28 of the bill, which was introduced on that same day by Rep. Blas Jonathan T. Attao ( Ind-Saipan).<\/p>\n<p>Attao stated that if the Legislature does not act on it, 25% of retirees\u2019 pension will be reduced, if not suspended, by April 15, 2024.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/images\/imgupload\/ed50af98e9219baf0210983b6bc82b7c.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Jude U. Hofschneider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate unanimously passed late afternoon yesterday a bill that will appropriate $5.2 million of&#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-407708","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\/407708","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=407708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}