CHRISTOPHER F. Fryling, former chief architect and chief CIP coordinator of the Public School System, is back in town under a 90-day foreign investment permit.
He is no longer connected with any agency of the government but House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Stanley T. Torres wants to know about Fryling’s dealings with PSS. He wants to be informed on how Fryling allegedly gained from his “moonlighting” projects in the CNMI while he was with PSS.
In a May 29 letter to Education Commissioner Rita H. Inos and Attorney General Robert T. Torres, the lawmaker asked PSS and the Attorney General’s Office to find out how much Fryling “gainfully received from his private projects.”
Fryling, a Canadian national, resigned from PSS and left the island last March after he got his divorce papers. He was no longer allowed to work in the government when he lost his immediate relative status following the divorce.
Torres said Fryling’s gains should be “seized and returned to the CNMI coffers” since he “illegally collected it during PSS hours.”
The chairman alleged that Fryling, while still with PSS, “moonlighted” for the construction of the house of former Board of Education Chairman Tony Pellegrino’s mother-in-law.
He also alleged that Fryling received an architectural fee of $1,450 from a new school on Navy Hill.
Torres said he also knows that Fryling paid PSS a visit on May 16, “either looking for more collection or applying for his former job.”
Fryling’s license for his private business is valid from June 12, 2000 to June 12, 2002.
Torres surmised that the architect “must have been double-dipping doing private projects while getting paid by PSS.”
“No wonder why PSS projects got all messed up,” Torres said.
PSS spokesman Robert H. Myers said Inos had already received Torres’s letter. But he said that “it is still inappropriate to respond.”
“We will first look into it before we issue our official response to Representative Torres’s concern,” he said.
