By Zaldy Dandan
Variety Editor

ANYONE out there who is not for education? Raise your hands please. How about motherhood and apple pie? Anyone?
This is an election year and, by now, citizens are aware that politicians are very, very pro-education when they need votes. Hence, this flurry of legislative activity on Capital Hill to ensure that PSS gets exempted from the budget cuts that the government has to make because it’s too big and too wasteful and, now, too broke.
So far, the Legislature has already passed two PSS funding measures. Both have been vetoed by the governor who is as pro-education as any of the lawmakers. Why? Because in their haste to burnish their pro-education credentials, the lawmakers have offered non-solutions to the school system’s funding problems.
The quickie passage of horrible legislation, to be sure, is nothing new on Capital Hill. But considering the seriousness of the government’s financial crisis, one would think that lawmakers, for a change, would finally give some serious thought to the bills they introduce and pass, particularly those that aim to address urgent concerns.
Consider, for example, the second of the PSS bills vetoed by the governor.
H.B. 15-242 would have required autonomous agencies, including CUC, to hand over 5 percent of their budgets to PSS and NMC.
How pro-education is THAT?
There is just one slight problem with this neat solution.
The governor says CUC’s 5 percent budget cut would mean a 25 percent utility rate hike, the implementation of which is a lengthy process. CUC must first file for an emergency rate increase, effect the increase and then collect the money from the same consumers who are already on the verge of insurrection over the current rates. Now collection happens at least 60 to 75 days from the date of the increase, so the cash transfer to PSS would not take place until July.
But that’s not all.
CUC’s 25 percent rate increase would also burden…PSS, which now pays for its own utilities. CUC, moreover, only had $1.2 million at the end of 2006 but still owed some $12 million to vendors.
“This bill fails to account for such calculations,” says the governor who called the measure “unreasonable and unsound.” That’s how politicians talk. You and I, however, would have resorted to “French” in describing H.B. 15-242.
So why didn’t lawmakers study what they were proposing before passing it? Were there public hearings on this bill? Were the affected autonomous agencies consulted?
And why do I ask questions whose answers you and I already know, like, “So did the Legislature really try to solve the school system’s financial problems?”
And then there’s the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, assuring the judiciary that it will get the funding it needs. How? “We have ideas — potential solutions,” says the committee chairman with, I believe, a straight face. So what about the funding needs of PSS, NMC, Public Health, Public Safety, Corrections and other very essential offices, like the municipal councils?
The judiciary, by the way, says “justice is never cheap.” Maybe. But why should it be so darn expensive?

**************

The administration, too, resorts to knee-jerk reactions, particularly on the federalization issue.
Instead of proposing changes to the draft bill that will address CNMI concerns while ensuring that the commonwealth will finally move forward and have stable labor and immigration laws out of the reach of the islands’ backsliding, flip-flopping politicians, the administration is still saying “No.”
Why? To protect, the governor says, the CNMI’s “economic tools” whose expert use has led us all to…well, look around you. That’s what this administration is clinging to. A third world economy. A bloated and broke government. A high local unemployment rate. And for what? So that the dying, if not already matai, garment industry can continue hiring cheap alien workers who are unaware that they will be unemployed a month or so after arriving here?
Pete A. has the better approach to this issue. The draft bill is not perfect — what is anyway? — but workable.
The task now before the CNMI’s more sensible leaders is to ensure that Washington, D.C. will give sufficient thought to how minimum wage increases will be implemented and how the federalization of immigration will occur.
Federal legislation simply delegates responsibility to one agency or another, but implementation will not go smoothly or well for many, many years. Will local labor and immigration employees be adopted by Homeland Security, for example? Will TSA numbers expand? There will be financial savings for the CNMI government if both departments are federalized, but it is not clear what results will manifest themselves in the future — and this should be the starting point of discussions on the draft bill.
Send feedback to zdtion@lycos.com