With Compact Impact money going entirely to the Public School System, plus a budget increase of about $3 million for PSS in 2005, there is no reason at all to veto the appropriation bill for fiscal year 2005, according to Senate fiscal committee chair Joseph Mendiola, noting that a veto would be \u201cbad for other programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope the governor approves the budget bill, that he doesn\u2019t veto it because of PSS. I believe doing that is bad for other programs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Gov. Juan N. Babauta had threatened to veto any budget bill that does not raise the PSS budget from the present $37.2 million to at least $42 million.<\/p>\n
The PSS originally requested for $45 million funding for FY 2005; the administration submitted a $41.9 million request to the Legislature. The conference committee approved $38 million for PSS plus a $1.5 million additional funding out of the $50 labor fee increase for nonresident workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost $40 million for PSS. I believe it\u2019s acceptable. You see, it\u2019s not only PSS that needs additional funding,\u201d said Mendiola.<\/p>\n
On the issue of the $4 million utilities payment appropriation, he said they arrived at the figure given the claim by the central government that it is being overcharged by the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.<\/p>\n
During a recent hearing, he said that administration officials testified that about 50 percent of the $11 million outstanding debt with CUC is \u201covercharge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finance Secretary Fermin Atalig said that the governor may veto altogether or line-item veto the $217.7 million proposed budget on two areas: PSS funding and utilities payment.<\/p>\n
He said that the Legislature only appropriated $4 million for utility payments in FY 2005 when the government\u2019s actual need is about $8 million. In the last appropriation, he said that the funding was $5 million. <\/p>\n
Mendiola said the strict implementation of energy saving measures must be enforced among all government offices. <\/p>\n
\u201cOffices can still bring down the electricity costs. People just need to be mindful of their uses,\u201d said the senator.<\/p>\n
Meantime, the governor, who reportedly received the transmittal letter on the budget bill last Friday, has 20 days to decide whether to approve or disapprove it. <\/p>\n
The administration originally asked for $226 million as its budget for FY 2005 but the Legislature only approved $213 million, an amount that was recently raised to $218 million following the submission of additional funding projections.<\/p>\n
This developed as Babauta announced Friday that he would commit the $5.1 million annual Compact Impact funding for the CNMI entirely to PSS in the next four years.<\/p>\n
Aside from the local appropriation and the Compact funds, PSS also receives federal grants annually amounting to some $26 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With Compact Impact money going entirely to the Public School System, plus a budget increase of about $3 million for PSS in 2005, there is no reason at all to veto the appropriation bill for fiscal year 2005, according to Senate fiscal committee chair Joseph Mendiola, noting that a veto would be \u201cbad for other programs.\u201d<\/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-86698","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\/86698","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=86698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}