Apparently still irked over the governor’s line-item veto on the initial CIP bill, Senate Floor Leader Pete P. Reyes yesterday put his foot down on a request from the administration to hold a back-to-back session in the Legislature to vote on critical legislation.<\/p>\n
He prodded members of the Senate to withhold action on any bill coming from the House of Representatives until they have reviewed the pending measure.<\/p>\n
A session being held simultaneously in the Senate and in the House to pass immediately an administration-sponsored bill is “not a very good practice,” Reyes told reporters.<\/p>\n
“We need to review legislation. We cannot be receiving legislation without sufficient time to review it and discuss among the leadership,” he said.<\/p>\n
Reyes was responding to questions whether the upper house would hold a session to vote on the new measure appropriating more than $24 million in capital improvement project funds after the initial bill was vetoed by Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio.<\/p>\n
Senators were dismayed over the decision to exclude pet projects they inserted at the last-minute, including infrastructure plans on Rota and Tinian. Only the new prison and the completion of Marianas High School Gymnasium were approved by the governor.<\/p>\n
Administration officials have in the past asked the Legislature to fast-track passage of important legislation by holding back-to-back session. Lawmakers usually have given in to their request.<\/p>\n
But Reyes maintained this practice must stop now since the Legislature can’t count anymore on the administration’s support on bills they deem significant.<\/p>\n
“If they want us to do a back-to-back session, then get us involved from the very start,” he explained. “I resent the fact that we are going to be called to a back-to-back session because they have decided that this is good and they didn’t bring us in to air our concerns.”<\/p>\n
Reyes likewise called on his colleagues during a committee meeting yesterday to consider for voting only those bills that have been deliberated by the members.<\/p>\n
“We will allow members to review the legislation. We have done that in the past and members have expressed great concern that members are not given time,” he said.<\/p>\n
As Senate floor leader, Reyes has the authority to prioritize bills which the upper house acts on during a session.<\/p>\n
“I have no plans now or in the future to be putting on calendar for action legislation that we have not sufficiently reviewed,” vowed the senator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apparently still irked over the governor’s line-item veto on the initial CIP bill, Senate Floor Leader Pete P. Reyes yesterday put his foot down on a request from the administration to hold a back-to-back session in the Legislature to vote on critical legislation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46350","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\/46350","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=46350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}