Senate Legislative Initiative 16-10 has to be approved by at least three-fourths of the members of each house. It doesn’t need the governor’s approval, but it must be ratified by voters.
The 20-member House was supposed to put the proposal on the floor last Friday, but there was a lack of quorum, Speaker Arnold I. Palacios said in an interview.
“We need 14 votes to pass it,” he added.
As amended by the House, S.L.I. 16-10 will also mandate a gradual reduction of government personnel costs.
“We want to assure the people that if we float a bond we will also obligate the executive and legislative branches to cut personnel costs each year so that we don’t just go out and borrow to pay for past debts while making the same mistakes again and continuing on the same path,” said Palacios, R-Saipan.
Once the House passes the initiative, it will go back to the nine-member Senate, which needs seven votes to approve S.L.I. 16-10.
“We were told that the Senate is ready to pass it too,” Palacios said. “A lot of people depend on their Retirement Fund pensions and we don’t want them to lose their livelihood.”
Recently, the Superior Court ruled that the cash-strapped government owed the Retirement Fund $231 million.
According to Palacios, the ruling highlights the need to cut the government’s personnel costs.
“The pension obligation bond will help the government pay its debts to the Retirement Fund, but we should also refrain from hiring more and more people,” he said.
Personnel costs can be reduced through attrition and a desk audit, he added.
“We need to know the total number of government employees. We need to ensure that each position is defined and needed. A desk audit will tell us the truth, but maybe some people don’t want the truth.”
In a statement, Rep. Tina Sablan, who opposes the bond proposal, said the Legislature should hold public hearings on the legislative initiative “considering how significant an undertaking everyone seemed to agree that it was.”
Sablan, Ind.-Saipan, said her colleagues told her that “the public would be given an opportunity to be educated about the initiative once it passed and to make their own informed decisions at the ballot.”
“I said that the purpose of public hearings would be to solicit comments on how the initiative itself should be framed, and indeed whether or not the question should be placed at all,” she added.
The administration and Retirement Fund officials support the bond proposal.
