The Nutrition Assistance Program operated by the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs gets funding from the federal government for the salary of its staff, vehicles, fuel and coupons.
“Those are paid for by the federal government 100 percent,” Sablan said.
And yet “somebody” made a decision to reduce the hours of employees.
“That is wrong, and reason for it is a big lie,” he said.
“You don’t save the CNMI government any money by reducing the hours of those employees or many other employees paid for by the federal government,” he added.
Instead, Sablan said, the CNMI government is actually losing money.
“We are not helping ourselves. We are not helping these people that have these jobs. This is a lie and they need to fix that,” he said.
The Fitial administration said the federal grantors are aware of the financial constraints of the CNMI government.
In an email, Press Secretary Angel A. Demapan said while it is true that food stamp office employee salaries are fully federally funded, “the administration was more concerned about the issue of fairness and employee morale.”
He said Gov. Benigno R. Fitial “chose to implement the austerity work hour reduction across the board, with the exception of critical emergency response personnel like police officers, firefighters, corrections officers and others.”
Demapan noted that “the governor is the chief executive of the commonwealth. Therefore, he holds the authority to regulate government work hours in the CNMI.”
He added, “Federal grantors have been made aware of the financial constraints of the government and the austerity work schedule for government employees. At the end of the day, it’s about equitability for both local and federally funded CNMI government employees.”
Over the last 34 months, Sablan said he has told Fitial that a large part of his work as congressman has been to ensure that the CNMI is included in new and expanding assistance programs.
In his letter to the governor recently, Sablan said, “I ensured that we are eligible for $120 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants, have access to an additional $100 million Medicaid grants through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and receive $10 million in new funding for sewer and water projects.”
Sablan said he continues to urge the administration to join him in his effort to include the CNMI in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program.
But Fitial said the CNMI government cannot afford the administrative costs involved in SNAP.
