The toothless Office of the Public Auditor is already overwhelmed with investigations involving Ethics Act violations, which include the case of an attorney general advocating for the governor’s candidate; a former department head getting a fat contract to provide the same services he was responsible for as a cabinet member; and now what appears to be election fraud and voter intimidation.
This administration is a colossal failure by any standard. Its mismanagement and corruption have brought the CNMI to its knees, but it is skillful and ruthless in exercising power and now it wants voters to support its candidate, or at least anyone but the incumbent congressman who has the audacity to work for you, the people, and not for the governor.
Voters, on Tuesday, do the CNMI a favor by reminding yourself that you’re supposed to elect a delegate and not a puppet to the U.S. Congress.
Regarding the initiatives
THERE are three of them on the ballot and although there was some public education on these important measures — brochures, some radio ads and letters to the editor — analysis was sparse and most of the voting public seem uninterested or unwilling to learn more.
Clearly, no one knows what the full impact of these proposals will be, but we do know that these initiatives involve millions of dollars and at stake is the government’s precarious financial condition.
If you do not know what you’re voting on, then vote no.
Step down from the SHEFA board Daling
RIGHT now, the vice speaker continues to hold a position on the SHEFA board to, she says, “ensure a continuity of service.” Unfortunately, she cannot do this. There are legal requirements for board membership and one of them is that you cannot be an elected official. She must step down and let irate parents place phone calls to lawmakers and the governor to protest the lack of scholarship payments.
If the vice speaker can turn a blind eye to a constitutional prohibition what is the point of having laws — and lawmakers?
The CNMI is already suffering from a bad economy, institutional failure and a complacent community unable to take action that leads in a direction different from the path it is on.
Elected officials should not compound this worsening crisis by their blatant disregard for the law.
Speaking of which
THE former secretary of commerce reportedly entered into a contract with the administration before his appointment as department head was formally severed. If this is the case, then other provisions of the Government Ethics Act were violated, namely section 8532, titled “Restraints on the Use of Public Position to Obtain Private Benefit,” and it reads: “A public official or public employee shall not use of attempt to use public position to obtain private financial gain, contract, employment, license, or other personal or private advantage, direct or indirect, for the public official or public employee, for a relative or for an entity in which the public official or employee has a present or potential economic interest.”
The administration’s claims of necessity are ridiculous. As with everything else, the governor has options. He could have impressed upon his then-commerce secretary the need to bring his work to a conclusion before leaving government service, or at least to a point that could be taken over by a subordinate or one of the other five contractors hired with ARRA money to obtain and spend these badly needed funds. Instead, with what appears to be a wink and a nod, the administration expedited Mike Ada’s departure to make room for more political hires while paying a premium price for these new “accommodations.”
Four more years.
Don’t override the line-item veto
BUDGET cuts will mean an exodus of qualified public sector employees, disabling the government even more.
Replacements will include completely unqualified and inexperienced political hires. The people can expect public service to decline further.
Meanwhile, the Senate and House minority bloc are still unable to grasp the new financial reality. They prefer to buck the facts and are attempting an override of a veto that disallowed unjustified expenses for Rota and Tinian.
That budget provision is the clearest explanation of why the CNMI is in big trouble. The Senate wants to bring more money to Rota and approve-after-the-fact payments for charter flights to the island. These, however, are expenditures without appropriations or any other legal authorization.
Rota senators claim that it is an amount already included in the MVA budget just passed. So why the need to include it as a separate line item? Too many questions remain unanswered for this to be a good thing for the commonwealth and its citizens.
