By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

SENATOR Ben Pangelinan, D-Barrigada Heights, expressed suspicion yesterday that the administration is hiding information about the $23 million fund that was supposed to have been distributed to government retirees in partial payments of the cost of loving allowances owed to them.
Pangelinan said he was disappointed with the administration’s response to his Freedom of Information Act request for documents pertaining to the “missing” $23 million that was supposed to have been drawn from the four special funds identified by a public law.
Public Law 28-151 identifies the remaining balances of the Territorial Highway Construction Fund, the Tourist Attraction Fund, the GTA Privatization Fund, and the Interim Transition Office Fund as potential sources of money for initial COLA payments.
As of Monday afternoon, Pangelinan said, all government agency heads who got the FOIA requests have responded with nothing but a cover letter.
“No documents were enclosed in all agency replies, citing that copies will be provided upon request during inspection. All agencies had a unified response indicating that documents can be made available for inspection at their respective offices,” Pangelinan said.
He said only the Guam Economic Development and Commerce Authority and the Department of Revenue and Taxation have promised to deliver the requested documents.
Other offices that received the FOIA requests are the Governor’s Office, the Department of Administration, the Bureau of Budget and Management Research, and the Department of Public Works, which administers the territorial highway funds.
Saying the administration has nothing to hide, DOA director Lourdes Perez said the requested documents are available for Pangelinan to examine.
She said DOA has not been able to compile the documents that the senator has requested because “he was asking for seven months of financial and accounting information.”
“He wants the balance records from June 2006 and transaction records for up to the end of January. There are multiple funds within these funds,” she added.
“All of these documents are public records. There’s nothing for us to hide. Everything is available for his review,” Perez said.
But Pangelinan alleged that the administration’s “continued reluctance to provide the documents I’ve requested….is nothing more than a blatant ploy to prevent the people from knowing what exactly is going on.”
“It just makes you wonder why there’s such resistance and hesitation to give me ‘discloseable’ information,” he added.
The Democratic senator also noted the conflicting statements made by chief of staff George Bamba about the $23 million COLA money.
“Mr. Bamba said providing information to me and Sen.  Eddie Calvo’s Committee on Finance would not be a problem.  However, it has come to a point where you begin to wonder if they just don’t want to let us know what they did with the money, or if there was ever any money to begin with,” Pangelinan said.
Despite the enactment of PL 28-151 late last year, the administration has not made a single COLA payment. Instead, it came out with a $123.8 million loan proposal intended to cover the entire judgment award.
Calvo says the administration can start making partial COLA payments through PL 28-151 and other mechanisms already in place such as the line of credit, which the governor is authorized to arrange with lending institutions, as well as the issuance of promissory notes to retirees.