By Sen Judi Guthertz
For Variety

Quotes from Governor Camacho’s State of Our Island Addresses:
2005: “A decade of recession is finally over! Guam’s economy has stabilized, and is expanding for the first time in 10 years! We’ve held this government accountable for every dime it spends! We are cutting costs and finding innovative ways to eliminate unnecessary or excessive spending.”
2006: “Together, we brought this government back from the verge of collapse. We dropped unemployment by more than a third over the last three years and our people are back to work!??”
2007: “The financial state of the government of Guam is bleak. We cannot ignore the financial challenges before us that are directly related to the established fiscal policy and budget law. The Government of Guam is facing a financial crisis that can no longer be ignored. This government cannot sustain its current level of operations.”
In 2002, Senators Felix Camacho, Mark Forbes and Eddie Calvo were among the eight members of the Republican-led 26th Legislature. It was an election year, there was a fiscal crisis, and the Republican majority was either unable or unwilling to craft a full fiscal year budget for 2003. Instead, they passed a four-month budget and left the difficult task of budget fixing to the incoming Democrats. As hoped, the Democrats did the dirty work, addressed many of our island’s fiscal problems, and were voted out of office. It was a very successful Republican strategy.
I’m sure that no one wanted us to travel full circle in just four years, and end up back in fiscal hot water again, but here we are. Governor Camacho says we have a financial crisis, Speaker Forbes is cutting jobs and salaries, and Vice Speaker Calvo is only now having hearings on our fiscal problems. The major difference? This is not an election year, and the current governor and Legislature must face up to the problems.
The governor shares some blame because of his rosy pronouncements. The Legislature is also to blame for eagerly accepting every outlandish budget projection, and not providing a check and balance.
Now that there is consensus that a problem exists, the governor plans to submit a revised FY2007 budget next week. Senators B.J. Cruz and Rory Respicio introduced a bill to do this last year and I introduced Bill 16 on January 3rd for the same purpose. It’s too bad we wasted so much valuable time.
I suggest that both the Legislature and administration take a long, hard look at the many proposals to cut costs and enhance revenues that have surfaced in past fiscal crises, as well as my deficit elimination talking points that I issued last week, with 22 cost containment measures, and 20 revenue enhancements, including the following:
• Streamline GovGuam;
• Abolish deputy director positions;
• Totally freeze hiring and travel except when federally funded;
• Immediately freeze “pay adjustments” for unclassified positions;
• Freeze the purchase of vehicles with local funds;
• Impose a $1,000 non-refundable fee on every H-2 worker in anticipation of the military buildup;
• Close the Dave Santos Small Business Act loophole to benefit small businesses and remove tax exemptions for large corporations/companies;
• Revisit the Qualifying Certificate program to increase revenues;
• Collect past due taxes;
• End privatization efforts that don’t lower costs; and
• Lobby the federal government to cover the unfunded portion of the EITC mandate.
This is just part of my list. Each point and valid proposal from the past should be fully considered to end our fiscal crisis and pay our debt.