Acting Public Lands Secretary John Del Rosario will continue to implement workforce reduction within the former Marianas Public Lands Authority, saying the agency has “excess baggage.”<\/p>\n
“Some will have to go. We don’t need that many people in the department,” said Del Rosario in yesterday’s press conference at the Governor’s Office.<\/p>\n
Del Rosario took over the department’s top post effective Wednesday evening or immediately after the enactment of Public Law 15-2, which abolishes the MPLA.<\/p>\n
There are some 64 people working at the former MPLA. <\/p>\n
So far only three individuals have been sacked from the agency: commissioner Edward Deleon Guerrero and independent legal counsels Ray Quichocho and Antonio Atalig.<\/p>\n
Atalig, as MPLA independent legal counsel, had not been public knowledge until this week when the new management disclosed that MPLA was to issue him a check worth over $19,000 in legal fees. <\/p>\n
Meantime, Del Rosario said that agency employees’ salaries would have to be reduced to fit the Civil Service salary level.<\/p>\n
As an autonomous agency, MPLA had the freedom to offer bigger salary packages to its employees.<\/p>\n
For instance, MPLA had paid its commissioner $84,000; finance chief officer, $71,400; and several others earning above the salary cap.<\/p>\n
MPLA’s in-house legal counsel Alan Lane receives $84,000 plus fringe benefits, while Quichocho received nearly $600,000 in two years. <\/p>\n
“We will have to be under this law [salary cap]. …I made this very, very clear. Everybody has to follow the law,” said Del Rosario.<\/p>\n
The law puts the cap at $54,000 a year, he cited.<\/p>\n
Meantime, sources said that Lane, who keeps his post at the department, is believed to be getting an exemption from the salary cap owing to the nature of his profession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Acting Public Lands Secretary John Del Rosario will continue to implement workforce reduction within the former Marianas Public Lands Authority, saying the agency has “excess baggage.”<\/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-98321","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\/98321","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=98321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}