By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

SENATORS, meeting behind closed doors all day yesterday, agreed to set a budget ceiling across-the-board and abandon the 5 percent penalty on delinquent agencies sanctioned for failure to meet financial reporting requirements.
“We came to a consensus on several issues and we are moving toward a balanced budget,” Vice Speaker Eddie B. Calvo, R-Maite, said in a telephone interview after the meeting.
He said lawmakers came closer to plugging the holes and erasing the budget shortfall.
Senators went back into session last night to finalize Bill 74 and include several amendments that were agreed upon during the closed-door meeting.
Minority Leader Judi Won Pat, D-Malojloj, said the meeting outside the session hall helped in expediting the budget process, otherwise stalled by standing rules.
“When you’re in session, it’s hard to just proceed with discussion of things because we are bound by rules,” Won Pat said.
Calvo said the option to replace the 5 percent deappropriation clause with a budget cap for each department and agency has lowered the budget shortfall from $19 million to $7 million.
“The reporting requirement remains intact, but we have agreed that the penalty would be imposed only on the director or the head of the agency,” Calvo said.
To further close the gap, Calvo said there was still a need to impose spending cuts.
Won Pat and Sen. Rory Respicio, D-Agana Heights, suggested that the appropriation level for each department and agency be adjusted based on incoming cash.
“Several of us don’t feel comfortable with penalizing agencies that failed to meet the reporting requirement because it would affect the employees and it’s not their fault. We don’t want to punish the employees,” Won Pat said.
Respicio said the removal of the deappropriation clause would simplify the process. “Setting a budget ceiling will have the same effect, minus the smokescreen,” he said.
Sen. Jesse Lujan, R-Tamuning, left the meeting before it ended because “I feel that the whole process is a joke; they’re playing with numbers.’’
Lujan said he was still not convinced that raising fees to balance the budget was the right way to go.
“Instead of further taxing people, we should look at areas where we can pull money,” Lujan said.
He had proposed to cut off the allotments for dormant agencies such as the Women’s Affairs Office and redundant agencies such as the Guam State Clearinghouse which is performing the duties that the Bureau of Budget and Management Research has been doing.
The Clearinghouse, for example, has an annual budget of $350,000. The agency has a remaining allotment of $150,000 which Lujan said the government can spread out among other agencies.
His proposal was outvoted, however.