The SHEFA board, headed by Chairman Jose C. Mafnas, met yesterday, to discuss the passage of the House Local Bill 17-33 which allocated $3 million in poker fee collections for the scholarship program.
The bill was passed on Monday and is now with the governor.
The board will ask the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation to include funding for SHEFA’s office personnel.
Mafnas noted that H.L.B. 17-33 separately allotted $100,000 for SHEFA’s personnel and operational expenses.
He said the delegation is aware that SHEFA is not staffed by full-time employees.
The office, he added, is being managed by an employee of the Saipan mayor’s office, Henry Hofschneider, who was appointed as its administrator.
SHEFA board member Josephine T. Sablan said they need professional services but not necessarily consultants.
In a letter to Rep. Ramon A Tebuteb, R-Saipan and the delegation chairman, Mafnas said it is the board that should have expenditure authority over SHEFA funds and not the Department of Finance secretary.
“As the board is responsible for ensuring the SHEFA financial assistance program is in compliance with the laws and regulations governing the said program, it only makes sense to charge the board with the authority to expend the appropriated funds for the program it is mandated by law and regulations to administer,” he said.
It will be difficult for the Finance secretary to enforce his expenditure authority over SHEFA funds as there will be no oversight or supervisory check, Mafnas said.
“This is the reason why the board recommends granting the SHEFA board expenditure authority so the secretary of Finance may remain impartial in ensuring that [the provision in the law] is faithfully enforced,” he said
In his report to the board, Hofschneider said Rep. Antonio Sablan, R-Saipan and chairman of the delegation’s Committee on Health, Education and Welfare, did not reply to his comments about the bill.
“The bill must be redrafted to ensure clarity,” Hofschneider told Sablan. “In its present form I believe it contains many ambiguities that any effort to administer it will be very difficult. The objective or intent of the bill is exactly what is needed to address the concerns in the finding section of the bill, and it needs to be supported. But as long as the proposed provisions remain unclear and may be subject to more than one interpretation, it must be fixed before it is passed.”
