By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

THE Guam Chamber of Commerce is supporting the creation of a proposed Department of Public Safety that will consolidate all the various public safety agencies on Guam.
The proposal, contained in Bill 83 authored by Sen. Frank Ishizaki, R-Yona, is scheduled to have a public hearing this morning at the Legislature.
The bill proposes to consolidate the following: the Guam Police Department, the Guam Fire Department, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Youth Affairs, the Office of Post-Mortem Examinations, the Motor Carrier Division of the Department of Revenue and Taxation, the Office of Highway Safety of the Department of Public Works, Airport Police, Port Police, and the Airport Fire Division.
The Chamber is urging all its members to testify in favor of the bill as the business group has always advocated measures that would improve the efficiencies of government of Guam departments and agencies.
According to the Chamber, an immediate reduction in current spending that can be realized through the reorganization and consolidation of GovGuam agencies would help solve GovGuam’s current cash crisis.
Chamber chairman Stephen Ruder said GovGuam must downsize wherever it can and consolidate the many redundancies on government, preferably outsourcing those functions that are more efficiently done outside the government, as well as leveraging the numerous assets GovGuam owns that continue to sit idle.
“We are quite dismayed that the focus of late has been solely on initiatives to increase fees and taxes and not to reduce government waste or restructuring. These proposed changes not only serve to support the status quo, they penalize the entire community because the cost of living will increase when these fees are passed on to the public,” Ruder said.
He added that the firm solution to GovGuam’s financial difficulties is not to implement new taxes but to expand the local tax base and thereby generate new and increased revenues to the government of Guam.