The Legislature\u2019s approved $2.4 million payment for government employees\u2019 retirement and health insurance contribution is acutely inadequate but it is better than nothing, according to Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat figure is very small. We\u2019re owed $70 million in employer\u2019s contribution alone by the government,\u201d said Reyes in an interview. \u201cBut we\u2019ll accept any amount. It\u2019s better than nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed payment of $2.4 million, which also includes some portion for Medicare, is contained in House Bill 14-304, which passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives recently.<\/p>\n
Last week, though, House members voted against transmitting the bill yet to the Governor\u2019s Office. Both the House leadership and the minority bloc said the bill should be recalled due to \u201clanguage problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The House original version of the bill called for a $10.9 million appropriation for FY 2005, mainly to settle the government employees\u2019 within-grade increase and retroactive pay.<\/p>\n
The bill, authored by Rep. Jesus Attao, said the funds would be sourced from the additional revenues identified by the Babauta administration for FY 2005.<\/p>\n
The Senate amended the bill to increase the amount to $20 million, and instead of tapping government revenue, the Senate moved to authorize the Commonwealth Development Authority to borrow the money.<\/p>\n
The amended bill now contains a $9 million reimbursement for the Saipan and Northern Island Legislative delegation\u2019s local funds, which were used to pay off the retroactive salaries of Saipan government employees.<\/p>\n
Meantime, NMIRF\u2019s Reyes pointed out that the central government has not presented any other plans to pay off its debt with the Fund any sooner.<\/p>\n
The continuing resolution allocates 2 percent of the total annual appropriation for deficit reduction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the government\u2019s job to find ways on how to settle this huge financial liability. So far, we\u2019ve received no suggestion as to how they can effectively manage the debt,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
To date, the CNMI government\u2019s liabilities total $113.3 million, including $79.1 million for Retirement Fund payments. The $79 million is an accumulated amount over 10 years, said the Department of Finance.<\/p>\n
Other debts as of April 2005 include $12.6 million for Retirement Fund quarterly allotments, $13.3 million in utility bills for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., $1.7 million for the Marianas Visitors Authority, and $6.8 million for vendors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Legislature\u2019s approved $2.4 million payment for government employees\u2019 retirement and health insurance contribution is acutely inadequate but it is better than nothing, according to Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes.<\/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-90150","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\/90150","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=90150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}