What has been will be again
SEVERAL House members on Wednesday spoke about the importance of fiscal responsibility and accountability. Hurrah! And yet they are also in favor of providing public funds to not just one specific class of voters, but to others as well, in an election year. What about medical referrals, Settlement Fund payments, etc., etc.?
Some of them pointed out that in a five-year period, the governor’s off-island travels cost about half a million dollars. The horror! But there was no mention of the $7 million they provided to the judiciary so it can fix its extravagant building that it failed to maintain. (“Lack of budget,” the judiciary says, even after raising its court and other fees.) Did any of the fiscally responsible lawmakers ask the judiciary how it intends to maintain Guma’ Hustisia and prevent another costly “renovation”?
A lawmaker said the expenses of one of the governor’s off-island trips ($23,000) would have funded the salary of a government employee in his precinct. So government-funded off-island trips are a waste of taxpayers’ money, but putting a constituent on government payroll is fiscal responsibility?
To paraphrase one of the fiscally responsible lawmakers, “Imagine how much good the CNMI government could have achieved if it did not have to pay for the judiciary’s $7 million building renovation/repair expenditures? Imagine creating additional government jobs or being able to provide for medical referrals or scholarships.”
Yes. Imagine.
What has been done will be done again
THE lt. governor, in his testimony before the House JGO committee, mentioned in passing that the funds for the governor’s “questionable” expenses came from the governor’s budget which, in FY 2022, amounts to $715,000. That figure included a $100,000 discretionary account.
Clearly, we should expect that next time around, the virtuous House would propose a significant reduction in the dastardly governor’s budget so more funding could be allotted to, say, medical referrals which in FY 2019, for example, was provided by lawmakers with a budget of $2.9 million, but whose actual expenditure was $17 million which, naturally, triggered loud complaints about deficit spending from, more or less, the same lawmakers.
But it’s “a new beginning,” as some of the fiscally responsible lawmakers would put it. (Including those who may not be aware that like “change” or “hope,” “a new beginning” is a political catchphrase as old as politics.)
So, from now on, we should expect them, as lawmakers who “hold the purse,” to provide more funding for all the agencies, programs, services and government jobs they consider “essential.”
Right?
Not a lot of new things under the sun
PERHAPS the House JGO hearings would have been less tedious — at least for some us — if the committee that “investigated” the governor’s public expenses included a minority-bloc member or two and not just lawmakers who support other candidates for governor.
Maybe next time then. Because there is likely to be a next time. In 2012, an election year, the then-governor’s political opponents vowed to impeach him if they were elected to the House. They won. They impeached him. This time, the governor has been impeached in an election year. His opponents can’t wait to give him the boot. And why should they? They have the “magic number.” And they obtained it because four of the governor’s party mates joined another former party mate who is running for governor. Suddenly for these valiant lawmakers, the documents provided through the Open Government Act have become “irrefutable evidence.” They can see, ahem, clearly now.
And so now the show’s venue moves to the Senate chamber with a new cast of characters.
Incidentally, this is one of those political debates in which the two sides insist they’re for the truth while accusing their opponent of politicking — and they’re usually both right.
