Commonwealth Development Authority board chair Tom Glenn A. Quitugua has criticized the House of Representatives for passing the bill canceling the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019 $45.5 million debt with CDA \u201cwithout consultation\u201d, setting \u201ca bad example\u201d among other government borrowers.<\/p>\n
Quitugua said the House hastily passed the measure, House Bill 15-64, without giving courtesy to CDA, the creditor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were not invited. CDA should have been there when they tackled the issue,\u201d said Quitugua.<\/p>\n
The bill was passed on a vote of 14-4, with only House minority bloc members Ramon Tebuteb, Benjamin Seman, Manuel Tenorio, and Joseph Deleon Guerrero, opposing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecency dictates that you have to pay your loans. That bill sets a bad precedent\u2014that it\u2019s okay to incur huge debts with government agencies since it would be written off anyway,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Further, Quitugua said that, by passing the measure, the House essentially quashed a previous legislative action on the CUC-CDA debt settlement.<\/p>\n
Over a couple of years ago, the Legislature passed two bills addressing the matter. These bills, which became laws, resulted in the signing of a memorandum of agreement between the two agencies.<\/p>\n
The MOA, among others, instructs CDA to waive a portion of the debt, and allows CUC to issue shares of preferred stock valued at $45 million to CDA.<\/p>\n
Quitugua said the new bill gets rid of the equity conversion altogether as provided in the MOA.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, the House is canceling everything with no conditions. No payback terms. This is irresponsible,\u201d said Quitugua.<\/p>\n
The loan money was used by CUC for infrastructure development such as engine purchase and repairs.<\/p>\n
The new bill argues that since the funding was spent for development projects that benefit the entire community, CUC should no longer be required to pay it off.<\/p>\n
Based on an earlier computation, the CUC\u2019s unpaid loan with CDA had reached over $100 million, including interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commonwealth Development Authority board chair Tom Glenn A. Quitugua has criticized the House of Representatives for passing the bill canceling the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019 $45.5 million debt with CDA \u201cwithout consultation\u201d, setting \u201ca bad example\u201d among other government borrowers.<\/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-99410","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\/99410","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=99410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}