GOVERNOR-ELECT Arnold I. Palacios and Lt. Gov.-elect David M. Apatang will announce today, Monday, Dec. 12, the members of their Transition Committee.
Tasked to oversee the transition process for the Office of the Governor are the teams of Donna Flores, Bego Camacho and Julie Omar who are assigned to the offices of special assistant for administration, scholarship and the governor’s special assistant.
JP San Nicolas and Mike Evangelista will oversee the transition at the office of the governor’s legal counsel; Dayna Sunderland and Julie Omar at the governor’s special advisor and chief of staff offices; Mickey Evangelista and Mary Serrano at the offices of senior policy advisor and special assistant for legislative and public affairs; and Brad Ruszala and Jojo Alepuyo at the offices of special assistant for communications and protocol.
Former Special Assistant for Office of Budget and Management Virginia Villagomez will oversee the transition at the Department of Finance and Office of Grants Management while Rep. Tina Sablan has been assigned to the Infrastructure Recovery and Office of Planning and Development.
Revenue and Taxation Director Tracy Norita will oversee the transition at OMB and the Capital Improvement Project and Public Assistance Office; Florence Kirby at Youth Affairs; Gus Litulumar at Homeland Security and Emergency Management; and former Rep. George N. Camacho at the Criminal Justice Planning Agency.
Rep. Edwin Propst will oversee the transition process at the Department of Public Safety; Stanley Torres Jr. at the Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services; Lino S. Tenorio at the Department of Corrections; Fish and Wildlife Director Manny Pangelinan at the Department of Commerce; former Sen. Ray N. Yumul at the Department of Public Works; Rep. Leila Staffler at the Department of Labor; NMI Museum Executive Director Danny Aquino at the Department of Lands and Natural Resources; Yvonne Pangelinan at the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs; and Felix Nogis at the Department of Public Lands.
Clemente Bermudes will oversee the transition at the Bureau of Military Affairs and Veteran Affairs; Luis Tilipao, Carolinian Affairs; Acha Lifoifoi, Indigenous Affairs; Maryann Borja, Women’s Affairs; Ben Pangelinan, chief of parole; Mike Evangelista, zoning administrator’s office; Vince Pacho Sablan, Joeten-Kiyu Public Library; Maggie Sablan, Office of Personnel Management; Frank Rabauliman, Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Management; and Sylvan Igisomar, Commonwealth Office of Transit Authority.
George Q. Camacho and Eusebio Manglona will oversee the transition at the lt. governor’s office.
In an interview on Sunday, Palacios said, “now that the real work begin, we are going to do the transition work and then we’ve got to look forward to January 9 when we get sworn into office.”
He expects his transition team to work “very hard” so that “we hit the ground running so to speak, as there is still a lot of work that we need to cover.”
He added, “We look forward to working very hard and putting the things that need to be put together —back to governing and getting the people’s trust back.”
Palacios said during the transition, they will stay focused on issues and at the same time, make sure that government operations “stabilize and public service continues.”
He said they will work hard to provide assistance to the people because, throughout their campaign, “we’ve come across many members of our community that have been marginalized [and] are not doing very well, and those are the people that we are going try to see what kind of programs we can put together to help them.”
Sen. Edith Deleon Guerrero said the incoming members of the 23rd Legislature need to work with the Palacios-Apatang administration to make sure that all their initiatives are “pushed forward.”
According to Rep. Leila Staffler, “We are here to start fresh with rebuilding trust by opening up our Commonwealth financial records, by ending the culture of cronyism, by restoring integrity in our most important offices from top to bottom especially in our enforcement agencies, by instituting election reform, improving and expanding access to healthcare, and the other things that are important to our community needs.”
She said there is also a lot of work to be done “to ensure that we can build our workforce so that we can solve the problems before we get to 2029,” referring to the end of the federal CW-1 program.
