Northern Marianas College and the Public School System should better run to the Governor\u2019s Office rather than the Legislature to get a share of federal funds, says House Committee on Education chair Rep. Justo Quitugua.<\/p>\n
Quitugua, in an interview Friday, said the governor \u201chas a lot of resources\u201d at hand.<\/p>\n
In particular, Quitugua said the governor has full discretionary authority over the 702 funds totaling over $11 million and some $5 million in Compact-impact funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI recommend that NMC, PSS, and the Board of Education should start meeting with the governor on capital improvement projects because the governor is receiving $11 million while the Legislature doesn\u2019t have money,\u201d said Quitugua.<\/p>\n
This came soon after Quitugua, together with the House leadership, tried but failed to appropriate $350,000 for NMC during a session Thursday.<\/p>\n
The House leadership, following a meeting with NMC officials Wednesday, inserted the amount in House Bill 14-187, which originally aimed to appropriate $15,000 for the Joeten-Kiyu Library and $80,000 for PSS using Tobacco Control Fund.<\/p>\n
Due to opposition from the House minority bloc, the bill was passed without any reference to NMC. <\/p>\n
Rep. Arnold Palacios questioned the legality of the use of Tobacco Control funds for NMC\/La Fiesta, while Rep. Heinz Hofschneider noted that the La Fiesta project was never approved by the Legislature to begin with.<\/p>\n
They also insisted that making a new appropriation for NMC using the fund\u2014which is meant only for specific projects\u2014is not allowed, since the government is operating on a continuing resolution.<\/p>\n
The government can\u2019t appropriate beyond the budget [of $213 million],\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
The college said it would need a total of $350,000 to pay off its first annual lease installment of $200,000 for La Fiesta in October and fund its operations up to December this year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Northern Marianas College and the Public School System should better run to the Governor\u2019s Office rather than the Legislature to get a share of federal funds, says House Committee on Education chair Rep. Justo Quitugua.<\/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-83487","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\/83487","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=83487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}