Gov. Eloy S. Inos yesterday said he\u2019s glad that Saipan has gone this far\u2014closer to having a $2-billion integrated casino resort following the Lottery Commission\u2019s decision to grant a conditional license to Best Sunshine International Ltd.\u2014but admitted that there are still a few more issues to address before he can say that \u201ceverything is a go.\u201d <\/p>\n
In an interview with Saipan Tribune at the governor\u2019s office on Capital Hill, Inos said there are still areas that need to be worked out such as the casino gaming plan and other things.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn those negotiations you need to have both parties agree to whatever that\u2019s on the table. But I\u2019m happy and pleased that it has gone this far with the selection and now it\u2019s going to be about the award,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n
He hopes the award will move things along such as the release of the $30 million that\u2019s being held in escrow and getting the disbursements for the retirees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re making some headway,\u201d Inos said.<\/p>\n
As to when the retirees will to start receiving their deferred 25-percent pension, Inos disclosed that in a week or two the administration should be in a better position to make that determination.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now we are talking to the Retirement Fund. They have all the data. We don\u2019t have the data. So we\u2019re trying to figure out what\u2019s the best way, most expeditious and efficient way to get those checks out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Retirement Fund, Inos said, has calculations to do and that the administration acknowledges that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully within the next week or two we should be able to know how things are going to fan out from that point,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The Lottery Commission on Tuesday unanimously granted a conditional casino license to Best Sunshine International Ltd. The approval is considered \u201cconditional\u201d until the Lottery Commission and Best Sunshine negotiate and come up with a casino development agreement. <\/p>\n
Retirees are looking forward to the release of their withheld 25-percent pension since last year, once the $30 million that Best Sunshine deposited is released following a grant of a final casino license. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Eloy S. Inos yesterday said he\u2019s glad that Saipan has gone this far\u2014closer to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[988,256,928,38],"class_list":["post-41655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-best-sunshine","tag-casino","tag-lottery-commission","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41655","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=41655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}