FIXING the CNMI government’s woes is woefully simple. Wholly lacking, however, are the fortitude and resolve on the part of so-called CNMI leadership to adopt these solutions.
1. Do away with all government-funded vehicles for legislators and judges. They get paid to go to work and to be at work all day. If necessary, provide them with bicycles. Or a free bus ride to/from work each day from McDonald’s parking lot.
2. Do away with most DPS vehicles. Are DPS officers not supposed to be physically fit? Give them bicycles too. After all, is it really necessary for them to cruise along Beach Road in air-conditioned, four-wheel-drive, gas guzzlers? For those needing motorized transport, how about some used golf carts, or three-wheel-scooters like those used by HPD in Waikiki?
3. Cut by 50 percent the CNMI judiciary’s expenditures — by abolishing the ridiculously expensive and unnecessary CNMI Supreme Court, slashing judge’s salaries in half, reducing judges’ retirement benefits, and selling the never-paid-for Guma In Hustisia temple constructed at the judiciary’s insistence as a monument to itself.
Before foolishly creating the CNMI Supreme Court during the late 1980s, appeals from the Superior Court were handled efficientl, expeditiously, and with little or no cost to the CNMI — by the federally funded Appellate Division whose three-panel members routinely included judges from the Superior Court.
Then came Article XII challenges and the perceived need to have a wholly CNMI Supreme Court which, in turn, promptly made a mess not only of the Article XII challenges — allowing those challenges to unnecessarily proceed for a decade rather than promptly quashing them at the outside via prompt summary judgment — but of the CNMI economy and international reputation as a place where “a deal is never a deal” in the process.
Equally astounding to some remains the disclosure that those initial Supreme Court justices now receive six-figure-retirement checks, with one bringing home $160,000-plus annually!
This judiciary in tandem with the Legislature effectively coerced the Retirement Fund into loaning to the judiciary funds to construct the Guma In Hustisia building — which loan remains outstanding to date!
Bearing equally in mind the fact that many of these CNMI justices/judges could barely cut it in private practice and/or had little or no meaningful private practice experience, yet went on the public payroll to the tune of...what is it now $125,000 per annum or so?
Cut their salaries in half. Let them drive their own cars to work. Slash their retirement benefits — beginning with those now retired who bear principal responsibility for the quagmire now constituting the CNMI judiciary. And if they don’t like it, then show them the door. There are plenty of good, experienced, lawyers out there willing to serve as judges — most of whom, equally important, will have no need of “learning by doing” as has been historically the m.o. of subpar CNMI jurists but, rather, are already learned, skilled, fair, and impartial.
4. Cut by 2/3 the size of the CNMI Senate — providing one senator each from Saipan, Rota, and Tinian. Ditto the House. The Covenant requires that a bicameral legislature be in place but not the size of the bicameral legislature. And make them part-timers. With part-time staffers.
5. Forget even considering nuclear power. We’re talking about a government wholly incapable of providing even the most basic of services to its constituents, e.g. drinkable water, 24-hour water to homes and fire hydrants, schools, roads, litter control, sanitary landfill/sewer discharge, and oil-generated-electric power. Does anyone seriously believe such folks could be entrusted with owning, operating, monitoring, or in any manner being connected to nuclear power? Better to give public lands to alternative energy development companies and the like. Xall former Rota resident Pat Moore at Hawaiian Electric Lighting Company (a HECO sister entity) for starters. And get a decent grant writer — decent being not someone’s relative but someone who knows how to write grant applications.
6. Have a Good News/Bad News meeting on the next CNMI government pay day. Implement the “good news”: a 25 percent pay raise for all CNMI employees to commence in two weeks — along with the bad news: a 50 percent reduction in the number of CNMI employees to commence in two weeks. Savings of around 25 percent for the CNMI.
7. Preclude the hiring of all CNMI retirees...or, maybe only those receiving more than $50,000 annually in retirement benefits. After all, are they not principally responsible, along with BenTan and his handlers over the past 15 years, for the CNMI’s dismal fiscal and social woes?
Not difficult. Just a matter of resolve.

BRUCE L. JORGENSEN
Kabul, Afghanistan