Speaker Arnold I. Palacios, R-Saipan, noted that when the governor was still speaker “he said the community should be fully informed about emergency proclamations.”
The public, Palacios said in an interview on Friday, “need to know about, for example, the real state of [the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.].”
Asked for comment, Press Secretary Charles P. Reyes Jr. in an e-mail said the “governor’s use of his emergency powers is responsible and consistent with our Constitution. Again, the governor does not relish invoking such powers but certain situations demanded that the governor invoke such authority in order to address a crisis.” (See story on page 11)
“Interestingly enough,” Reyes said, “many of these situations requiring such action by the governor were triggered by legislative action or inaction. For example, it was P.L. 15-94 that prompted an emergency declaration for CUC. This was the law, now (temporarily) rescinded, that forced CUC to charge rates below cost at a time when fuel prices were hitting record highs. Another example: when the Legislature failed to pass a responsible amendment to the salary cap, in order to provide competitive compensation for a pharmacist at the [Commonwealth Health Center]. Here again, the governor was forced to declare an emergency. But once the emergency has passed, as in the case of [the Commonwealth Ports Authority], the governor will immediately terminate such executive orders and declarations because he is only invoking such powers as a matter of necessity.”
Reyes said Fitial “has provided reports regarding the CUC declarations and he is prepared to provide more information to the Legislature, if needed.”
The governor earlier provided a report about CUC’s state of emergency, but Palacios described it as “a binder containing raw data and public documents that didn’t say anything.”
He added, “It didn’t say anything about the extent of the emergency; it didn’t explain why procurement rules have to be suspended, what funding was spent — how much and from what source? There was also no mention of how exactly will the administration solve the emergency. Do we have a plan after the contract with Aggreko ends?
CUC has a 12-month, $6 million contract with Aggreko, which is temporarily providing power to Saipan.
Palacios said Fitial is the only CNMI governor who frequently resorts to emergency declarations, which allow the government to award contracts without going through the bidding process.
“He signed almost 18 [executive orders] in the past two and a half years, but he has not told the public how these E.O.’s have addressed the emergencies,” the speaker said.
Last week, the governor extended the state of emergency for the Commonwealth Health Center’s in-house pharmacy for another 30 days. This allows CHC to retain its pharmacist who gets more than the salary cap set by law.
Signed by 14 of the 20 House members, House Resolution 16-60 states that despite the governor’s “hands-on governance of CUC and utilization of the emergency and reorganization authority for nearly three years to run CUC, the situation at CUC appears to be worsening as evidenced by the 120 plus days of state of emergency in 2008 alone and the absence of any clear signal from either the governor or the CUC executive director as to a timetable on when the administration will permit CUC to operate outside a state of emergency declaration.”
The resolution described as “equally troubling” the governor’s failure to submit to the Legislature full and detailed reports on the “diversion of available funding to pay for measures taken to cope with the emergencies specified in each of the executive orders….”
The resolution said in E.O. 2008-17, the governor “includes in the emergency declaration not only issues with respect to the state of disrepair of Power Plant 1, but also compliance problems between Aggreko’s temporary power generating equipment and environmental and land use regulations, lack of maintenance work at the Chalan Kiya distribution transformers and other parts of Saipan’s electric production and distribution system, and the removal of used oil from a CUC tank.”
Also of “grave concern” to the House, its resolution stated, “is the broad, sweeping and regular use of executive emergency authority to suspend any CNMI regulatory statute and to sidestep procurement regulations to deal with emergency conditions that have not been directly supported with sufficient information.”
The governor’s use of his emergency authority “should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances of extreme peril to the people and property of the commonwealth,” the resolution stated.
It added, “[C]ontinued reliance on…such extraordinary authority is ill-advised and continued resort to such authority serves to promote poor planning and coordination by the administration, undermines the quality and integrity of our procurement procedures and ultimately proves costly as regular procurement procedures are sidestepped in favor of often costly sole source or emergency procurement.”
Palacios said the Legislature has passed H.B. 16-108, which proposes to restrict the application of the governor’s disaster emergency powers, but added they may need to pass a more “strongly worded” measure.
Introduced by House Floor Leader Joseph N. Camacho, R-Saipan, the bill, which now heads to governor, clarifies that “a disaster emergency does not include government financial crisis or hardship.”
Press Secretary Charles P. Reyes Jr. said yesterday that Fitial “will not support legislation to limit what our…Constitution provides for the chief executive. The governor must be allowed certain constitutional powers to address real crisis situations. I believe just about every governor in the 50 states has certain emergency powers provided for by law.”
He added, “If the governor didn’t have certain constitutional emergency powers, we would not be able to restore power to Saipan using the Aggreko units and CPA’s bond would be declared in default. These powers are necessary.”
