WITH just the Office of Personnel Management left to be heard, the House Committee on Ways and Means is almost done with the hearings in preparation for the drafting of the fiscal year 2023 budget measure, the committee chairman, Rep. Donald Manglona said.
FY 2023 starts on Oct. 1, 2022. The governor submitted his proposed budget to the Legislature on April 1, 2022.
In an interview, Manglona said the committee has met with heads and officials of all the departments and agencies except for OPM. He said they had to reschedule the hearing that was initially set for last week.
However, he said they will also have to wait for the governor’s revised budget submission before he and his fellow committee members can start to work on the draft of the FY 2023 budget bill. Without the governor’s revised budget submission, which the governor was supposed to send on July 1, 2022, Manglona said they cannot draft a budget bill.
In his initial submission, the governor proposed a $101.3 million budget for FY 2023. He also allotted $16 million in American Rescue Plan Act monies for the central government and a total of $1 million in other federal funds for various government operations.
“Maybe because the government employees were granted administrative leave on Friday, the governor’s office staff were not able to transmit it on time, so we will find out on Tuesday if they have submitted it over the weekend,” Manglona said.
Among the concerns that he expects the governor’s revised submission will address are the funding for many of the departments, and agencies that were “inadvertently left out” in the initial budget submission.
Manglona said these include the Marianas Visitors Authority and the Northern Marianas Technical Institute.
Aside from the locally funded proposed expenditures, Manglona said his committee also expects to see a revised spending measure for ARPA. He said Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig in one of the budget hearings, indicated that there would be an amended ARPA budget for FY 2023 “because they are going to use ARPA monies for government agencies’ operations.”
Rep. Donald Manglona, right, with Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez, second left, Reps. Richard Lizama, left, John Paul Sablan, center, and Joel Camacho, second left, pose for a photo during the Liberation Day celebration at Garapan Fishing Base on Monday.
