Instead of subsidies for charter flights to Rota, the governor urges
“greater legislative collaboration” with the Marianas Visitors Authority in its effort to effectively promote the CNMI.
Fitial said subsidizing a private company for charter flights and related tourism activities on Rota is also not supported by any detailed cost analysis to justify the amount.
He noted that Tinian and Saipan face immense challenges with charter flights.
Subsidizing charter flights for one island and one company may lead to subsidies for the other islands as well, but more importantly, may lead to government subsidies in other private efforts in the CNMI, Fitial said.
Instead of subsidizing one particular company for one particular island, Fitial said the Legislature should work with MVA.
For his part, Senate President Paul A. Manglona, Ind.-Rota, said the Senate did not agree to a 16-hour cut and 13 unpaid holidays in exchange for these subsidies.
He said the budget bill they approved does not provide any additional appropriation to Rota.
Manglona said the Senate fought to protect government employees from the “drastic impact” of the administration’s austerity measures.
“What compelled the Senate to finally give in to the administration and House leadership’s demand are the 1,400 people who had not been working for eight days due to government shutdown,” he said.
“We wanted to bring the people back to work,” Manglona said.
In a separate interview, Sen. Francisco Q. Cruz, R-Tinian, said before the Senate session on Friday night, he spent time in his office looking at the numbers of working hours the people were already losing as the shutdown continued.
He figured out that if the shutdown continued, the people would end up getting the number of working hours in a year that the administration insisted on.
“It would not make sense anymore that as we continue to fight for the people’s working hours, they would still end up with less because of the shutdown,” Cruz said.
