The House leadership is inviting the public to attend the House session tomorrow morning, saying that \u201csignificant\u201d legislative action to address the controversial fuel surcharge is expected to take place.<\/p>\n
House leadership spokesman Charles Reyes Jr. said the majority bloc expects to see \u201ca positive development\u201d during the session.<\/p>\n
He did not elaborate, noting that the leadership has been consulting with other lawmakers on how to effectively address the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s financial crisis, particularly relating to fuel costs.<\/p>\n
Vice Speaker Timothy P. Villagomez said he hopes to see the passage of his recently introduced bill, which adjusts the CUC electricity rates, removes the fuel surcharge, and cancels the $45-million CUC debt with the Commonwealth Development Authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy bill is a solution. It\u2019s not a total solution, but it provides the numbers that CUC asked for when we met with them,\u201d said Villagomez.<\/p>\n
He said he is open to other solutions from his colleagues. \u201cIf they have other solution, they can present them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He declined to comment on the proposal raised by minority leader Arnold I. Palacios to provide subsidy to CUC to shoulder the fuel surcharge payment for up to 2,000 kilowatt hour per household.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have not seen it so I cannot issue any comments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Villagomez said he would be meeting with Palacios, and possibly other lawmakers, today to discuss their proposals in preparation for tomorrow\u2019s session.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, we\u2019ll pass this and see the Senate\u2019s action,\u201d Villagomez said. \u201cWe can\u2019t sit down and do nothing because we are in an urgent situation.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House leadership is inviting the public to attend the House session tomorrow morning, saying that \u201csignificant\u201d legislative action to address the controversial fuel surcharge is expected to take place.<\/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-92978","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\/92978","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=92978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}