“We’re committed to passing a budget — we can still resolve our differences and come up with a bill we can pass,” Speaker Arnold I. Palacios, R-Saipan, said in an interview.
Senate President Pete P. Reyes, R-Saipan, shares the speaker’s optimism.
“We want to have a new budget — I’m very hopeful,” he said in a separate interview. “Not having a budget is simply unacceptable. We just don’t want another fiscal year without a new budget.”
He said the problem now is that the House and Senate legal counsels “are the ones who can’t agree.”
FY 2009 started on Oct. 1, and the current budget was enacted more than two years ago.
Sticking point
“We want [the budget] out,” said Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider, one of the senior House members. “We’re very very close to passing it. It may not be to everyone’s liking but the conference committee is trying its best to address everyone’ concerns.”
According to Hofschneider, R-Saipan, the new sticking point is the interpretation of the constitutional provision that requires the passage of a balanced budget.
The House of Representatives and the Senate previously disagreed on the inclusion of the austerity Fridays and no-pay holidays as proposed by the governor. The House opposed these measures and rejected the Senate substitute budget bill that included them. A House-Senate conference committee was then convened to draft a compromise bill. The Senate passed it, but the House has yet to do so.
“We’re trying to balance the budget without the austerity measures,” Hofschneider said. “Without these measures, we’ll have a deficit of $9 million. The governor has to identify new sources of revenue and make them available for appropriation. But if he’s not willing to do that then we have to cut the budget from $156 million to $147 million.”
He said there is no support for furloughs.
“And we will oppose austerity Fridays and no-pay holidays — the last time these measures were implemented, we saw no significant savings; too many exemptions were granted and the low-income employees ended up bearing the brunt of the paycuts,” Hofschneider said.
There is “very little” in government operations that can be cut, he added. “So we have to decrease personnel cost. The judiciary is skin and bones already so the Legislature may have to sustain another 10 percent cut. We may have to switch to a part-time Legislature. The right thing to do now is for everyone to come on board and agree on personnel cuts.”
Hofschneider believes that the actual FY 2009 revenue collections will be below $147 million.
Frustration
Palacios said he shares the frustration of the House-Senate conferees.
“But there is a concern that the budget bill they approved is $9 million short — it’s not balanced,” he said. “I think they’re expecting the cover-over taxes from the feds, but the governor has to make an official declaration that those funds are available and can be included in the budget as required by the Planning and Budget Act. The Legislature cannot identify new revenue resources — only the governor can.”
Palacios he will propose a meeting between the Legislature and the governor and Finance Secretary Eloy Inos.
“We’re almost there [passing the budget],” the speaker added. “And we appreciate the hard work of the conferees. We just need to address this constitutional glitch. I don’t want to give up. The other senior members don’t want to give up. We can still get this done. [This] week we’ll resume our work on the budget. It’s just unacceptable not to have a budget again.”
It’s balanced
Reyes said the Senate’s senior legal counsel believes that the budget bill approved by the House-Senate conferees is “balanced” and complies with the CNMI Constitution.
“That bill is already the compromise version,” he added. “But we’re still willing to go back to the table and work with the House. We’re not going to point fingers — we just want a budget.”
What he finds “disturbing,” however, “is that when the House and the Senate are already working in tandem, harmoniously, it is our legal counsels who are disagreeing with each other.”
Reyes said the concerns on the constitutionally of the budget bill approved by the conferees “should have been ironed out during the conference committee deliberations. The Senate and the House should not have been subjected to this new issue. The legal counsels should have been guiding the conferees. It’s quite disheartening that when we finally fine-tuned our differences, it’s our legal counsels who now can’t agree. It’s not supposed to be that way.”
But Reyes remains hopeful.
He said Sen. Maria T. Pangelinan, D-Saipan and chairwoman of the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee, “dedicated countless hours on preparing the budget and she remains very accommodating to all the concerns of the other members. The speaker is encouraging his colleagues in the House to work with the Senate. The executive branch is also very supportive and cooperating with the conference committee to ensure that we pass a budget.”
Besides Pangelinan, the other members of the House-Senate conference committee are Sens. Paul A. Manglona, R-Rota; Sen. Joseph M. Mendiola, Covenant-Tinian; acting House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Victor B. Hocog, Ind.-Rota; Reps. Edwin P. Aldan, Covenant-Tinian; and Justo S. Quitugua, D-Saipan.
