Baka also seeks to sidestep the very crux of the matter — that members of the general public are wholly entitled to know in what manner and in what amount public funds are being spent by government officials to provide publicly paid-salaries and benefits to public servants…in this case the lawyers hired by Fitial to ostensibly represent the garment factory magnate and his garment puppeteers in the lawsuit against the feds.
The public has every right to know how much public money is being used to pay each and every public servant. This is, of course, separate and distinct from knowing or seeking to obtain the medical records of those public servants which analogy a person with Baka’s background and legal knowledge must know is utterly inapposite and calculated to mislead.
Nobody’s asking for the medical records of these private attorneys hired with tax dollars paid by the CNMI general public — though, in this vein, the production of their respective educational backgrounds/CVs would certainly be appropriate.
What is sought and irrefutably appropriate under the CNMI’s Open Government Act, however, is for the public to learn how and how much these private lawyers serving the CNMI general public are being paid…to the penny.
Had such a ludicrous position have been adopted during Mr. Baka’s tenure with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he would likely have been sanctioned not only by the court but professionally disciplined as well.
Does Mr. Baka now suggest, for example, that all U.S. Freedom of Information Act requests as to expenditures of federal funds must be denied when federal funds are being litigated in U.S. courts?
Would he suggest, for example, that where private counsel or temporary judges (e.g., so-called administrative law judges) are retained and paid with U.S. tax dollars that U.S. taxpayers via FOIA and/or persons litigating in U.S. courts should be precluded from knowing how and how much these private attorneys and/or ALJs are being paid?!
Of course not. Heck, not even the Guma In Hustisia judges’/justices’ salaries/compensation, nor that of U.S. judges, can be lawfully hidden from the public.
And given the ludicrous hypocrisy of this scenario, Mr. Baka’s current motive and intent should be viewed as precisely what it is — pure obfuscation designed to hide and cloud from the public what each and every CNMI taxpayer deserves to know : just how and how much taxpayer funding is being used to yet again bolster this governor’s unbridled support of his private sector affiliates primarily responsible for not only his present incumbency…but his speakership which he then parlayed into CNMI taxpayer-funded pay days of $10 million or so to Abramoff…thus, in turn, bringing about the very federalization this governor now would dupe others into believing is so very harmful to the CNMI.
In short, Fitial helped assure $10 million in public funding to Abramoff. This led to federalization. And now Fitial wants millions more in public funding to be used to combat the results derived from his prior misdealings with convicted felon Abramoff.
Baka claims that “transparency” is not the most important issue here. He’s wrong — the CNMI public who foots the bill for the private attorneys involved — the bill Fitial led all to believe at the outset was NOT being publicly funded — are not stupid, are not blind. The public can see clearly through the obfuscatory veil Mr. Baka now seeks to use in clouding reality as to what is and is not a public right — full knowledge about, candid disclosure of, and forthright accountability of, any and all public funds being used to fuel Fitial’s private-sector-anti-feds campaign.
BRUCE L. JORGENSEN
Honolulu, Hawaii
