Of course
“[I]t is more than likely that the transition report’s main theme would be: ‘It’s worse than we thought.’ ” — MV editorial, Dec. 9, 2022
THE CNMI government received about $600 million in federal funds from the federal government to primarily pay for the costs of running the CNMI government during a global pandemic. The islands’ only industry, tourism, was shut down by government restrictions, and the only way not to “burn through” $600 million was to furlough government employees, impose paycuts, shut down offices, programs and services — and raise taxes and fees.
The entire point of the federal aid was to prevent more hardship in this remote and tiny U.S. Commonwealth whose main employer — and vendor — is the CNMI government.
Everyone knew this, including the politicians opposed to the previous administration. Just before the election, they were reminding everyone — voters especially — that ARPA funds would run out soon, and there would be furloughs and other austerity measures, again.
It is therefore absurd to accuse the previous administration of spending federal funds that had to be spent during the Covid emergency to prevent the collapse of the CNMI government.
The actual question that demands an answer is if the previous administration spent the federal funds illegally. As the new governor has pointed out, that is an issue that the Office of the Public Auditor, the Office of the Attorney General and the federal government itself should “look into.”
Meanwhile, as the new administration itself has stated, it will continue to assess the government’s financial records to determine the CNMI government’s actual financial status. In this regard, the previous administration’s financial and budget officials, specifically former Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig, should help “reconcile” the figures.
We’ve been here before
TWO more things to remember: 1) CNMI’s financial condition has been dire since March 2020 when the pandemic shut down the local economy; and 2) the feds not only provided hundreds of millions of dollars in financial assistance, they also funded a fiscal response summit.
The summit was convened virtually in April 2020 to discuss, among other distressing things, the $64 million hole in the CNMI government budget in FY 2020 alone. This was before ARPA. The projected deficit for FY 2021 was over $85 million.
Caution
GOVERNMENT’S paramount mission, apparently, is to “burn through” public funds (i.e., other people’s money), local or federal. Promising to impose real and actual spending cuts that would affect a lot of people (voters) does not win elections. Voters elect politicians who promise to do popular things: free this, free that, more of the good, less of the bad. And these cost a lot of money.
In November, no one voted so s/he could be unemployed in January. Retirees did not cast their ballots so they would lose their 25% benefit.
Today, however, they are relentlessly bombarded by doomsday pronouncements regarding the financial woes caused or left behind (according to their new leaders) by officials who are no longer in power. But the people have heard it all before. (See election results.) What they would rather know is what their new leaders are doing to prevent further harm.
Now although many people are willing to believe the worst about the previous administration, they also know that from now on, any decision that will affect their jobs or their livelihood will be made by their new officials who were not elected to make matters worse.
