By Trina A. San Agustin
Variety News Staff

DEPARTMENT of Corrections director Robert Camacho was tasked with reducing the agency’s $13.9 million fiscal year 2007 budget by $300,000 to fall in line with Gov. Felix P. Camacho’s revised fiscal year budget.
“Our focus for this whole week is the reduction of our budget to fall in line with the governor’s proposed fiscal year 2007 reduced budget,” he said. “We are scheduled to meet with lawmakers this afternoon (Wednesday). There are three agencies before me, the Guam Memorial Hospital, the Guam Police Department, and the Guam Fire Department. That could take all day.”
While waiting for lawmakers to call on his agency, Camacho said he will continue to review his $300,000 cost reduction plan.
This plan includes the possibility of furloughs, a 32-hour work week, cutting night differential pay, and eliminating all scheduled travel for the agency.
“Night differential is given to employees who work between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. They get an extra 10 percent. Eliminating the differential would save DOC about $75,000. As for travel, we don’t travel that much anyway, so we are eliminating that,” Camacho told Variety.
The agency also must pay $90,000 to several prison facilities off island accommodating Guam inmates.
“We can’t do any contractual payments on that right now. We’ll have to delay it. We are trying to get Compact-Impact funds to help us with that, but at this point I have no other alternative. Another option is to cut DOC’s work week to 32 hours,” he said.
Yet another possible cost reduction, said Camacho, is to eliminate DOC’s unclassified employees, limited term employees, and the less senior employees.
“That is my last resort. I will first try to cut down on operation costs as much as possible. Then the hours of operation may be reduced and one day every sak period to help reduce costs,” he added.
Camacho said DOC officers will not be affected, but only those in administrative posts. A step 1 DOC officer gets an annual $19,974 salary inclusive of the night differential.
“If you take that and subtract 10 percent (which is the night differential), you will get the pay per annum of a step 1 DOC officer,” he added.
After calculating all these cost reduction measures, Camacho said he has reduced their current budget by $303,000, which is what the governor’s revised budget plan calls for.
“However,” added Camacho, “we don’t know what is going to transpire in the coming months. There may be a reduction in revenues. As we go along, we will make the cuts as needed. We all have to make sacrifices and we are doing our share to reduce government of Guam’s expenditures. Every agency is looking at cost cutting measures but at the same time trying to maintain the security of the community.”
Camacho said he doesn’t want an inmate escape, a prison riot, or something tragic to happen behind bars.
“We just need to make sure that whatever cost reductions we make won’t interfere with the safety and security of the community,” he told Variety.