By Gina Tabonares
Variety News Staff

THE five taxpayers who are challenging Superior Court Judge Arthur Barcinas’s decision to pay $123 million in the cost of living allowance settlement will face the judge in a hearing today.
The hearing will determine whether the taxpayers can intervene in the 13-year-old COLA case.
Pat Duque, Arnold Davis Jr., Thomas Sheldon, Ponciano Elgarico and Armando Dominguez will be in the courtroom of Judge Barcinas at 4 p.m. to follow up on the four pleadings they filed on Feb. 12.
The petitioners asked the court to disqualify Judge Barcinas from the case, vacate the court’s Nov. 21, 2006 judgment, and allow them to intervene in the case.
The same petitioners asked the Guam Supreme Court to issue a probation order against Judge Barcinas to prevent the trial court from taking any further action pending their motion to intervene and to assign the COLA case to a different judge.
The taxpayers say the decision on the amount of the COLA settlement should not have been entrusted to Judge Barcinas because his father, Jose T. Barcinas, is a member of the class, and stands to benefit financially from the court ruling.
The judge’s father, according to the petitioners, is to receive $134,595, the sixth largest amount in the COLA class.
They complained that other close relatives of the trial court judge are also class members and will also receive lesser but still substantial amounts under the settlement.
The intervenors’ lawyer, Robert O’Connor, claimed that Judge Barcinas rejected other calculations proposed by the governor and the Retirement Fund where the total recovery for the class would have been substantially lower because the recovery for his father and other relatives would have been less.
The taxpayers said because of Judge Barcinas’ questionable impartiality, his Nov. 21, 2006 judgment should be vacated and all orders entered since the judge was assigned to the case on March 17, 2005 should be abolished.
Besides Judge Barcinas’s conflict of interest, the intervenors also questioned Retirement Fund Board members Wilfred Leon Guerrero and Joe T. San Agustin’s failure to disclose that they will also benefit from the court decision to almost as great an extent as the judge’s father.