The CNMI government’s poor management of CIP’s, the report indicated, has given the federal government a reason to closely monitor the local implementing agencies.
Variety learned that a total of $23 million in CIP funds remain unspent because 30 projects have yet to start.
Last September, the Department of Public Works was stripped of its authority to spend CIP funds.
The authority was turned over to the CIP management office in a hope that all these projects would move ahead before the end of the fiscal year.
During the past few years, however, the local CIP office lacked the authority it needed to start implementing stagnating projects because the governor was not assigning projects to the office “presumably for political reasons,” the report stated.
But DPW Technical Service Division Director Joe Inos Jr. said only the recently awarded federal monies were turned over to CIP office since most of the projects now are not exactly DPW’s.
Inos said it is more appropriate now for the CIP office to handle CIPs.
DPW, he added, is “overwhelmed” by federal stimulus projects.
The problem
From $11,330,000 in fiscal year 2009, the proposed CIP funding for the CNMI in FY 2010 was decreased to $10,995,000.
Since 2005 the amount of CIP funds awarded to the CNMI went down because of the unspent monies, the report stated.
The report said for the first time since the beginning of the federal program in the CNMI, very few of the CIP’s were active and on-going.
The problem, according to the report, is the failure to implement the projects promptly and efficiently.
Former Gov. Juan N. Babauta earlier told the Variety that this situation was jeopardizing the commonwealth’s self-government.
He said due to the increasing unspent CIP fund balance, the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs might take actions undermining the CNMI’s self-rule.
