SENATE Vice President Karl King-Nabors has pre-filed Senate Bill 24-18, which would require the Department of Public Lands to submit its proposed annual budget to the Legislature for its approval.
Article XI, Section 6 of the CNMI Constitution requires DPL to transfer to the Marianas Public Land Trust all revenues generated from public land leases. Public Law 15-2, for its part, established an operations fund for the department’s administrative and management expenses. The department is currently required to submit to the Legislature its proposed annual budget, but for informational purposes only.
Public Law 23-26 or the fiscal year 2025 budget law allots $5.56 million for DPL.
S.B. 24-18, if enacted into law, would require DPL to submit each year, for legislative approval, a proposed annual budget following the budgeting and planning procedures applicable to all departments of the executive branch. The DPL budget shall include homestead road, power and water infrastructure on its list of expenses.
The bill would also require the DPL secretary to provide the Legislature a detailed report of all revenues collected and expenditures within 30 calendar days at the end of each quarter.
According to the bill, DPL “must be more fiscally transparent and accountable for its reasonable administrative and management expenses.”
Moreover, to prevent DPL from “inflating its annual budget and unduly withholding any surplus revenues from MPLT,” the Legislature must approve the department’s annual budget to ensure that it “complements the department’s actual personnel and operation requirement each fiscal year,” S.B. 24-18 states.
Prior to the enactment of the FY 2025 budget last year, MPLT urged the Legislature to reduce DPL’s budget.
MPLT’s legal counsel, Robert T. Torres, said MPLT’s $15 million line-of-credit agreement with the Office of the Governor for federally funded capital improvement projects “commits DPL to the legislative budget process, so the department’s budget submission should no longer be ‘for informational purposes.’ ”
