HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Lawmakers are pushing to pay the 400 retirees and their families still owed money by the government of Guam from a decades-old cost-of-living allowance class-action lawsuit.
Sen. Jesse Lujan on Wednesday tacked an amendment to the fiscal year 2024 budget act that would mandate GovGuam pay the estimated $6.2 million from “any available funding source” and allow anyone owed money to sue the local government.
The issue dates back to the late 1980s and early ’90s, when GovGuam failed to pay out extra, inflation-adjusted COLA amounts to retirees despite a mandate to do so. Though the 4,000 retirees won about $123.5 million in court, there have been various delays to payments. Some 400 retirees or their surviving beneficiaries are still owed.
“We hear a lot about the government officials who are alleged to have not followed the law and are now facing indictments. How do we, in good conscience, require the oldest of our retirees and their families to have to fight this battle in court?” Lujan asked Thursday.
He said many of those who were owed by GovGuam have died.
“By the end of 2006, about half of the entire class was no longer alive. By the time the government agreed in court to award the COLA certificates in 2010, about 65% to 70% of the COLA class had died. Today, not many remain,” he said.
Those who are owed mostly are the heirs of the original, unpaid retirees and have become retirees themselves, Lujan said.
Vice Speaker Tina Muña Barnes noted that, according to the Government of Guam Retirement Fund, the majority of the 400 or so who are owed are deceased, and had unidentifiable beneficiaries or had to have their outstanding payments go toward their estates.
“They did note that (the Department of Administration) does process claims for the COLA when proper documentation is presented,” she said.
‘We need to settle this’
Lujan’s amendment states the Department of Administration shall “immediately” pay any of those who present one of the numerous certificates of claim handed out to the COLA class, which note the government’s obligation to them for their unpaid COLA, interest and attorney’s fees. It also waives the government of Guam sovereign immunity for any suit or action to enforce the terms of the certificates.
Money owed will be paid from “any available funding source,” after appropriations chair Sen. Joe San Agustin noted that no pot of money was identified in the amendment.
San Agustin said the 30 years spans multiple administrations, and none of them took care of the debt.
“And we are now we are being asked to settle this. I’m in agreement, we need to settle this,” San Agustin said.
Attorney Mike Phillips, who represented plaintiffs in the original COLA class-action suit, told The Guam Daily Post this year he plans to revive litigation over the issue.
Jesse Lujan
