{"id":8267,"date":"2012-04-17T00:56:21","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T00:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=8267"},"modified":"2012-04-17T00:56:21","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T00:56:21","slug":"of-judiciarys-4m-budget-request-3-6m-for-68-ftes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/of-judiciarys-4m-budget-request-3-6m-for-68-ftes\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Judiciary&#8217;s $4M budget request, $3.6M for 68 FTEs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By Ferdie de la Torre<br \/>\nReporter<\/div>\n<p>Of the CNMI Judiciary&#8217;s $4 million budget request for fiscal year 2013, some $3.59 million is intended to pay for the salaries and benefits of 68 authorized full-time positions.<\/p>\n<p>Acting Chief Justice Alexandro C. Castro and Presiding Judge Robert C. Naraja said this is an increase by two more FTEs than the 66 FTEs authorized in Public Law 17-55 for fiscal year 2012.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the years, the Judiciary&#8217;s expenditure and hiring authorities deliberately reduced the number of requested FTEs to reduce the size of the Judiciary&#8217;s budget in direct response to dwindling government resources,\u201d said Castro and Naraja in the Judiciary&#8217;s budget request recently submitted to the Legislature.<\/p>\n<p>From 119 FTEs in 2003, the Judiciary&#8217;s authorized FTEs were slashed to 66 in 2012-a 45-percent decrease in total staffing.<\/p>\n<p>Castro and Naraja said the Judiciary has come to a point where further decreases in the number of FTEs is unsustainable.<\/p>\n<p>The new requested FTEs for fiscal year 2013 are for the positions of deputy marshal for Tinian and secretary to associate judge with total salary and benefits of $24,467 and $27,698 respectively.<\/p>\n<p>Castro and Naraja said the deputy marshal for Tinian was established by the Judiciary with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.<\/p>\n<p>However, Castro and Naraja said, the grant funding for this position has been exhausted, and efforts to seek additional grant assistance to continue funding the position have been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a result, there is no deputy marshal [on] Tinian at this time, and, moreover, there is currently only one other established FTE for the Judiciary on the island of Tinian [a Deputy Clerk I],\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<p>With respect to the secretary for associate judge, there are currently five Superior Court judges&#8217; chambers being serviced by four secretaries.<\/p>\n<p>Castro and Naraja said a fifth secretary position had been authorized in previous appropriations but had been left unfilled due to budget shortfalls and, as a result, was subsequently eliminated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ferdie de la Torre Reporter Of the CNMI Judiciary&#8217;s $4 million budget request for&#8230;<\/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-8267","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\/8267","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=8267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}