The amendment was introduced and approved by voters because everyone realized that continuing resolutions had allowed elected officials to ignore the government’s worsening financial problems. You don’t solve a problem by ignoring it. And you can’t solve a problem by waiting for it to grow so big that it can no longer be solved.
If the continuing resolution were still in place, the governor would have announced that collections were way below the current spending level. He would have implemented a 16-hour cut in the executive branch anyway and exercised 100 percent reprogramming authority that this spineless Legislature would have gladly given him. All this would not have fixed the root cause of the government’s problem: nating money but plenty expenses.
Why didn’t the shutdown provision force lawmakers to pass a new budget before Oct. 1?
• Inertia on the part of lawmakers. They’re not used to making tough decisions. They were, as usual, hoping that the governor would make such decisions for them.
• There were too many exemptions. Lawmakers not only didn’t pass a budget on time, but they also failed to pass a measure identifying the essential services in case of a shutdown. This allowed the governor to pad the list of “essentials.”
Next year’s numbers are expected to be bleaker than ever. Will this Legislature do a better job with the FY 2012 budget — or will it just pass a legislative initiative to repeal the shutdown amendment?
This year’s unprecedented government shutdown should make citizens think twice and think hard before proposing other reform measures such as the part-time Legislature.
The CNMI has so many good laws already. The Constitution itself requires the retirement of the deficit (which continues to grow). The real problem, clearly, is the resourcefulness of elected leaders in finding ways to skirt the rules, and the public’s indifference as to whether laws are being violated by the officials who swore to uphold them.
The sad fact is that the government in the CNMI is for hiring voters, dispensing contracts and other favors to supporters. People, moreover, prefer short-term ease so much that they refuse to even think about the dire and long-lasting consequences of their neglect. They may be mad today at their elected officials, but tomorrow they can be soothed by a promise of a job or a contract — regardless of the cost and impact of these favors on their community.
So imagine that the CNMI already has a part-time Legislature. What do you think will happen to the current legislative employees? Will they agree to be unemployed? Or — and this is more likely — will they get new jobs elsewhere, most likely in the executive branch? (What did you think happened to the 70 or so employees of the now defunct local Division of Immigration?) The expenses of the Legislature will be reduced significantly, which means more funds for the governor, who will be more powerful than he already is.
It’s the same thing with reducing the tax rebates, which is tantamount to a tax increase. Rebates are taxpayer money returned to taxpayers by the government. It is not the government’s money. The government has not been paying rebates on time and it’s still overspending and hiring new employees. Imagine the justification for more personnel if the government is not obliged to return taxpayer money to taxpayers.
The Legislature and voters, through the initiative process, can legislate anything. But how can you legislate attitude that doesn’t tolerate lawlessness and incompetence?
Send feedback to [email protected]
