Assuring that at least 14 members will be present, the House of Representatives is expected to vote today on an appropriation bill setting aside over $50 million worth of new capital improvement projects for Rota, Tinian and Saipan.<\/p>\n
The session scheduled this afternoon was called by House Speaker Diego T. Benavente after learning that the 18-seat chamber can meet the quorum to satisfy the required 14 votes on legislation appropriating government resources as provided by the Constitution for the lameduck Legislature.<\/p>\n
It follows the Nov. 26 session in which the House failed to pass critical bills, including the latest CIP package, as only 13 members were present at that time.<\/p>\n
According to Mr. Benavente, the House is trying to expedite passage of the measure to immediately begin use of the money secured through the $30 million loan extended by Bank of Guam.<\/p>\n
Offered by Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider, the proposal will set aside the loan as well as some $20.8 million in federal construction grants under the 702 Covenant for the island’s CIP program.<\/p>\n
Included in the measure are sewer, power and water projects in Kagman homestead; new prison facilities on Saipan; revitalization of the Garapan tourist district and various improvement plans on Rota and Tinian.<\/p>\n
The bill will also refinance ongoing infrastructure projects of the government whose initial funding was approved three years ago, such as the 60 emergency classrooms and the Kalabera landfill.<\/p>\n
Part of the interim financing under the $60 million bond float approved by the Legislature, the loan will be repaid by the proceeds from the sale of the bonds to be underwritten by investment firm Paine Webber.<\/p>\n
House members are hopeful immediate approval by the Senate which in the past has closely checked CIP appropriation measures to alter some of projects and their costs — a move that has derailed implementation of the program.<\/p>\n
The latest CIP appropriation is part of the efforts by the island government to use Covenant funds granted between 1996-2002 in order to spur the local economy, but it has met difficulties in meeting the matching requirement. The seven-year program has total funds of $154 million, including matching local money.<\/p>\n
About $77 million will be made available by the federal government in the CIP program and so far CNMI has raised over $58 million to match the grants from local resources and the bank loan. (BS)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Assuring that at least 14 members will be present, the House of Representatives is expected to vote today on an appropriation bill setting aside over $50 million worth of new capital improvement projects for Rota, Tinian and Saipan.<\/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-49145","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\/49145","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=49145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}