This Legislature did not pass a budget for FY 2008 and continues to drag its feet on the FY 2009 budget. Lawmakers are clearly unwilling to make the tough decisions to implement the spending cuts demanded by the government’s worsening financial crisis.
The Legislature, to be sure, does not have a magic wand that can wave away the CNMI’s problems, but it hasn’t done what it can do.
Besides proposing real cost-cutting measures to protect the jobs of ordinary government employees, lawmakers can pass a balanced and realistic budget. They can offer bills that will make it easier for the remaining businesses on island to survive. They can protect the integrity of the Retirement Fund instead of undermining its long-term viability for their own short-term political gains. Lawmakers, moreover, should be looking into possible ways to bring in more flights to the CNMI, and they can certainly put an end to the backdoor shenanigans at CUC.
The NMI Republican Party candidates in last year’s election supposedly had a platform, but now that the GOP controls the House again, its members find themselves lost in the blurry details of the inconsequential, the insignificant and the unimportant. Most of the major decisions taken by lawmakers are in reaction to the “decisive” yet ill-advised measures of the governor.
Clearly, this Legislature has no plan of its own. Most of its members have no agenda and are capable only of ad-hoc responses to the latest crisis reported by the media. But they want to get re-elected.
Good luck with that.
LAST week, the Senate amended a House bill to ensure that the Open Government Act popular initiative cannot be placed on the November ballot. It is this and other capricious acts by elected officials that are giving politics a bad name.
It is no secret that lawmakers don’t want the Open Government Act, or P.L. 8-41, to apply to the Legislature. There have been several attempts in the last few years to re-apply the law to the Legislature but they were either blocked or disemboweled by lawmakers. They were the ones who passed the law but they also want to be exempted from it. The instigator of last week’s Senate amendment, incidentally, is the author of P.L. 8-41.
The people who put these lawmakers into office have other ideas. They have taken matters into their own hands through a popular initiative petition. They have collected the required number of signatures — 20 percent of registered voters. When the AG’s Office said the gathered signature weren’t enough, more voters signed the petition. Now the AGO says the petition cannot be placed on the ballot in November because this year’s election is not a “regular general” election. This is a legal opinion not shared by other lawyers, but rather than quibble, the proponents of the initiative pushed the passage of a bill “redefining” this year’s congressional delegate election to satisfy the AGO. In fairness to the House, it passed the bill — which was then gutted by the Senate last week.
What are the senators afraid of? They know that a popular initiative requires a 2/3 majority vote. They also know that this issue has been debated to death already. This has been discussed by the community for the past two years. Its proponents have complied with all the requirements. Yet the Senate wants to change the rules in the middle of the game.
Lawmaking is not a game, however.
According to the Senate, it will only withdraw its amendment once the House passes Senate legislative initiatives. But the Open Government Act petition is a popular initiative, not a House legislative initiative.
The Senate amendment, in any case, is not exactly political gamesmanship. It’s just petty and childish. It will not prevent CNMI voters from placing the initiative on the ballot. If not this year, then surely next year. The Senate’s shameless act merely delays the inevitable.
We suggest that voters draft another initiative, this time imposing term-limits on lawmakers. It is now painfully obvious that on Capital Hill, seniority and maturity do not always go hand in hand.
