The challenge then should be to identify the expenses that are crying to be cut. Again, this should be a no-brainer. Identify key public services; don’t touch them. Zero in on the useless agencies or programs that duplicate each other. Abolish them. Reduce salaries, and get rid of the perks.
Now let’s see if we can be more specific.
First of all, conduct a desk-audit. Implement its findings. That is, lay off people.
Privatize CUC. Sell other non-performing assets, including foreclosed properties. Move all government offices to government buildings. End the government car privilege. Officials, like the people they supposedly serve, should drive to and from their jobsites using their own vehicles. Restrict gasoline reimbursements. There probably should be some exceptions — CHC and DPS — but for other government jobs that involve going from one place to another, the salaries should already include gasoline allowance. Require a 50 percent reduction in the utility bills of all government offices. Agency heads must figure out how to do it. Transform municipal government posts into appointive offices. They will get per-diems, not salaries. Create a part-time Legislature and reduce the number of its members. Take away their salaries and discretionary spending. Give them per-diems, instead. End the travel and housing allowances of the Rota and Tinian members. Use video-conferencing for sessions. All government boards and commissions should do the same. Abolish the legislative delegations. Reduce the size of the Legislative Bureau, including personnel salaries. Cut the salaries of other top officials — the governor, the lt. governor, cabinet members, justices, judges, etc.
It’s easy, really, to come up with these and other similar proposals. In fact, these have been discussed since the economy began to sputter in 1998. I’ve written several editorials about this issue since then and published like-minded letters from concerned citizens. CNMI politicians, moreover, all agree. But they can’t do anything about it once in office.
I’m sure we all know why, but we tend to approach this subject as if we don’t, or as if everyone else is not as “smart” and “concerned” as we are.
Let me spell it out: the CNMI government is the primary employer of CNMI voters. Any attempt to significantly cut its spending will harm its employees and their family members, who are also voters.
Abolishing agencies or programs, for example, can be implemented. Provided that the affected employees end up being hired by another agency/program. Government employees usually move from one office to another anyway. They are, after all, voters related to other voters. Imagine the pressure they exert on politicians in a small place where elections are often decided by razor-thin margins.
What else can politicians promise anyway? Jobs in a shrinking private sector that can afford cheap workers only?
For many citizens, in any case, the Legislature and its budget are emblematic of this bankrupt government’s extravagance. Yet no one seems to remember that voters themselves increased the Legislature’s budget ceiling. This happened in Nov. 1997, when the question was placed on the ballot.
Voters are not stupid. Like other people in other places, they are always thinking about their and their families’ interests. They know that the more money their lawmakers have, more employees can be hired, more contracts can be awarded, and there will be more money for those among them who can’t pay their CUC, cable TV, phone or medical bills, among other things.
We complain about special interests, but the entire CNMI is a crisscross of entrenched special interest groups. Every voter, one way or another, is benefiting from this system, which makes genuine reforms almost impossible to implement, let alone pass on Capital Hill. Let’s face it. Real reforms mean a lot of people losing their jobs. And they cannot be absorbed by the private sector because they’re not as cheap as guest workers and not as desperate and eager to cling to these jobs which entail real work.
Everyone wants to have a cushy job on top of first class healthcare, public education, public safety, utilities, retirement pensions and homesteads — without paying a lot, if at all, for any of these services and benefits. They know you need money to spend it, but they elect politicians who promise them free money, free services, free jobs. Politicians know they need to tell the truth, but if they do, they can’t win an election. Tina Sablan didn’t waste the people’s money. She didn’t lease or buy a new car. She didn’t hire employees she didn’t need. She didn’t use your money to promote herself by providing picnic tables and tents to her constituents, or buying hot lunches and fundraising tickets from their children. She worked for the CNMI’s best interest. She didn’t lie to you. And you didn’t re-elect her.
So what is to be done now?
There should be a desk-audit, which was promised by this administration anyway. Publicize the results. I don’t believe there is political will to enforce its findings, but the people should know the details of how wasteful their government is, and what agencies are merely duplicating the functions of each other, and whose services can be better provided by the private sector.
Politicians, for their part, should try to be more honest to their voters — who should be honest to themselves, too.
Right now, we have elected officials who, while disclosing the alarming figures of the government’s finances, are also hiring their supporters, qualified or not, for overpaid and unneeded positions.
This is why no one believes the government‘s austerity pronouncements since they became the byword on Capital Hill in 1998. “Austerity for us, prosperity for them,” the people say.
So we all know the problem, and we all know the solutions — which voters don’t like, if applied to them. That’s also a problem. That is the problem.
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