SENATOR Edith Deleon Guerrero said the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, funds that will be provided to the CNMI should not be misused or abused.
She also urged her colleagues to exercise their power as a separate but coequal branch of government by passing House Bill 22-33, which would require legislative appropriation for the ARPA funds.
The House vote on the bill was 10-10, but Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez invoked a rule allowing him to vote “twice.” He then declared that the bill had been “passed” by the House.
But Attorney General Edward Manibusan noted that according to the CNMI Constitution, a bill must be approved by at least a majority of the votes cast in each house of the Legislature.
The Senate did not act on the bill, which remains in the Fiscal Affairs Committee chaired by Sen. Victor B. Hocog.
The House leadership, which backs the bill, neither conducted public hearings nor attached a committee report to the measure.
In her remarks during the session on Tuesday last week, Sen. Deleon Guerrero said they should pass the bill for transparency and accountability.
One of the two members of the Senate minority bloc, she claimed that tax revenues were lost not as a result of Covid-19, but through “crafty legislation” such as those pertaining to the Saipan annual casino license fee of $15 million.
Based on official figures, CNMI government revenues have plummeted since the tourism industry shut down in March 2020 due to the global pandemic.
Deleon Guerrero said under ARPA restrictions, the “funds allocated to states [and territories] cannot be used to directly or indirectly offset tax reductions or delay a tax or tax increase.”
She added, “Let’s not forget that the CNMI has tax liens in the millions and we dare not try and attempt to make the American taxpayers pay for this with the ARPA funds.”
Deleon Guerrero said the CNMI should also avoid creating new programs or add-ons to existing programs that require an ongoing financial commitment, noting that ARPA funds are non-recurring so their use should be applied primarily to non-recurring expenditures.
She noted that recently, the administration created an Infrastructure and Recovery Office, which, she said, “goes against ARPA spending guidelines.”
She said ARPA is “beyond politics, as this is about the American taxpayer money that is not generated in the CNMI.”
She added, “This is about the right of the American people to know how their monies are being spent by local governments such as the CNMI…. It is about our integrity and honesty as a government that is being handed more than half a billion dollars as a rescue made possible by the American taxpayers across the United States of America.”
According to the CNMI Office of the Attorney General, there is no need for the bill because the ARPA includes restrictions and other rules that the CNMI must follow.
Edith Deleon Guerrero
