“A LITTLE bit of education.” This, according to House Speaker Heinz S. Hofschneider, is what the critics of his measure on the salary cap needs to have.
He said he was not being unfair when he proposed to sanction the excessive salaries of the past administration’s employees.
Sen. Diego M. Songao, Covenant-Rota, claimed that Hofschneider’s H.B. 13-126 “will make wrong things right” as the bill would exempt the past administration from the Compensation Adjustment Act.
But Hofschneider, in a recent interview, said it was not his fault that the previous House speakers and Senate president did not bother to follow P.L. 11-41 by requiring the past administration to first get sanction from the Legislature before giving employees salaries which were above the limit set by law.
“I wasn’t the speaker in the past and it is not my position to second guess the two other speakers before me why they did not give sanction to those actions that required legislative sanctioning. More importantly, on the Senate’s side, it did not also tickle their fancy to revisit the issue on P.L. 11-41 and I will also not second guess the thinking of the (upper chamber’s leadership),” Hofschneider, R-Saipan, said.
He clarified that his measure was not in any way a move to forgive the past administration.
“It is the responsibility of the Legislature to require sanction on salaries that are above the cap. But it’s already history. A lot of these people (from the past administration) who received salaries above the cap have already retired,” he said.
The speaker also differentiated what fairness on salaries means during the past and present administrations: “Fairness is on the basis of availability of resources. During the previous administration, there was money, so it legitimized the increase in salaries. But in this administration, how can you legitimize an increase in excess of the cap provided under P.L. 11-41 when you have instituted a severe cut in the budget and jeopardized all the departments and branches of government? That is the biggest and glaring difference.”
