Minority bloc lawmakers in the House of Representatives dismissed as \u201cwithout basis and unsubstantiated\u201d a business council\u2019s finding that land lease restrictions in the CNMI serves as \u201csignificant disincentives and deterrents to investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe House minority members find wanting, and is troubled by the unsubstantiated findings and conclusory assertions of SEDC [Strategic Economic Development Council],\u201d said the bloc in a report recently submitted to the House leadership.<\/p>\n
It said that SEDC, a task force created during the term of former Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio to aggressively pursue the expansion of the local economy, appears to have not made any meaningful review in terms of data and hard facts as to the real reasons that caused the decline in the CNMI economy.<\/p>\n
SEDC, the minority said, failed to look at the rationale of the restrictions as embodied in Article 12 of the CNMI Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt simply concluded that Article 12 is the cause of the lack of foreign investments in the Commonwealth. It blithely ignored the adverse effects of the Asian economic crisis [and] the ripple effect of the Korean airline crash on Guam in 1997\u2026,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The minority members are opposing the passage of Senate Legislative Initiative 14-3, which seeks to extend land leases of private land from 55 years to 75 years; and House Legislative Initiative 14-10, which seeks to extend public land leases from 25 years to 50 years.<\/p>\n
The minority said that the existing restrictions on land ownership\u201425 to 55 years\u2014is \u201ca very reasonable length of time to recoup one\u2019s investment.\u201d Besides, it said that parties could always negotiate another lease term before the original term expires.<\/p>\n
The bloc said the government cannot afford to give out such a long-term leases, as proposed to private individuals and investors, particularly in light of the diminishing amount of Commonwealth public lands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe population of the CNMI is growing at a very fast pace\u2026As we grow, the need for lands\u2026will increase, not diminish. We should not lease out public lands on a long-term basis, only to find out 20 to 30 years from now that we need to buy back the lands leased to investors,\u201d the minority said.<\/p>\n
The initiatives were introduced separately by Sen. Diego Songao and Rep. Martin Ada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Minority bloc lawmakers in the House of Representatives dismissed as \u201cwithout basis and unsubstantiated\u201d a business council\u2019s finding that land lease restrictions in the CNMI serves as \u201csignificant disincentives and deterrents to investment.\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-87102","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\/87102","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=87102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}