Gov. Juan N. Babauta is standing pat in his position to veto any budget bill if his proposal to allocate $42 million to the Public School System is not granted. <\/p>\n
Babauta said he may reconsider, though, if the approved funding for PSS \u201cis anything closer\u201d to the original request. This would mean the PSS having a minimum funding at $40 million to $42 million. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy position remains the same. What I was asking them [Legislature] was to bring the PSS funding to a modest level. They know that I\u2019d veto it if PSS funding is not restored,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Babauta said that the House-approved budget for PSS in 2005 is $3 million less than the administration\u2019s budget for schools.<\/p>\n
The administration had submitted a $41.9-million funding proposal for PSS. The Senate, however, further reduced it to $36 million.<\/p>\n
The conference committee tackling the 2005 budget reportedly agreed to put the PSS budget at $38 million. Under the continuing resolution, the PSS receives a $37.2 million budget.<\/p>\n
The joint panel report has yet to be adopted by both chambers of the Legislature.<\/p>\n
Babauta, in his recent letter to the Legislature, said that when he came into office in the midst of a budgetary meltdown, the one area of funding he refused to cut was the PSS budget. <\/p>\n
\u201cI still feel that providing our children with quality education has to be our first priority. Economic development, public safety, health are all benefited by having a well-educated citizenry,\u201d Babauta said.<\/p>\n
He said local funding for education has dropped 28 percent since reaching a high of $4,553 per student in 1997. Last year, the spending was only $3,274 per student.<\/p>\n
Babauta\u2019s FY 2005 budget would provide for $3,586 per student, which, he said, is \u201ca modest first step\u201d toward bringing school funding back to adequate levels. <\/p>\n
Babauta had also requested the Senate to restore the budget cuts made on the proposed funding level for the Marianas Visitors Authority, Public Health, Public Safety, and utilities. <\/p>\n
The House cut the MVA budget to $4 million from over $5 million and utilities to $4 million from $5 million. <\/p>\n
The Senate-approved budget, which the joint panel has reportedly adopted, keeps the agencies\u2019 funding at the current level.<\/p>\n
The administration requested $41.2 million for DPH, $16.1 million for Public Safety, $8.5 million for utilities, and $6.2 million for MVA.<\/p>\n
The conference committee, meantime, agreed to adopt the Senate-approved funding level at $218 million for FY 2005, in consideration of an additional $5.1 million in projected revenues. The House passed a $212.7 million budget package. <\/p>\n
The panel chose to use the additional resources for other items: $1 million for Rota and Tinian retroactive pay and $4.1 million for outstanding within-grade increase for government employees. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Juan N. Babauta is standing pat in his position to veto any budget bill if his proposal to allocate $42 million to the Public School System is not granted.<\/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-86264","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\/86264","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=86264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}