TWENTY-EIGHT years ago, the two biggest news items on island were the “federal takeover” bill introduced in the U.S. Congress by the new Republican leadership; and (drum roll please) the medical referral deficit amounting to $14.5 million — worth $27.8 million today.
The then-Department of Public Health Services said the approved medical referral budget was “unrealistic” and should be increased by the Legislature. Variety cited an Office of the Public Auditor’s report which stated that the medical referral budgets for fiscal years 1991 to 1993 averaged $2.7 million each fiscal year while actual costs amounted to $7.6 million.
A quarter of a century later, in 2020, Variety quoted a medical referral program official as saying, “We incur a deficit in the first month of the fiscal year. Normally, about 22% of our requested budget is appropriated. For example, if we requested $15 million, they will give us $2 million. So we are into deficit right away.” For FY2020, they asked for $18 million, but only $2.2 million was appropriated.
This year, 2023, once the new governor signs House Bill 22-77 into law, the medical referral program will have a new name. Will it be adequately funded? We will find out, soon.
In 1995, in response to the OPA report, the public health department said it had drawn up a new medical referral policy and would closely monitor it to prevent “runaway costs.” The then-administration, for its part, said it was considering the creation of a task force that would propose ways to reduce the size of government.” The task force would “enable the government to see where duplication of functions could be curtailed for a more efficient and less costly operation.”
So what happened next? The CNMI economy grew rapidly in the next two years. No more talks about “downsizing government.”
In an interview with Howard Willens in 1997, then-Gov. Froilan Cruz “Lang” Tenorio said, “I had to stop the medical referral program [in 1995] because we didn’t have the money. Now we have it. This is the thing. I just have to tell the people look, if you want me to provide you the services that you expect from the government, then you’d better favor economic development.”
Which brings us to the biggest CNMI news story in early 1995: Gov. Lang Tenorio telling U.S. lawmakers to keep their money, but leave the Commonwealth alone. Let me rephrase that. Here was a territorial governor saying no — no! — to federal moolah.
In his testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee chaired by the Republican author of the “federal takeover” bill, Rep. Elton Gallegly of California, Lang said the legislation would ruin the local economy, waste millions of federal taxpayer dollars each year, damage CNMI-federal relations and make the islands permanently dependent on federal assistance. (The word we’re looking for is “prophetic.”)
“I’ll make a deal with you Mr. Chairman,” Lang said; “… leave us with control of our immigration, taxation and minimum wage — not so we can continue with business as usual, but so we can institute the reforms that both of us want at the Commonwealth level, rather than from Washington. In return, we’ll leave you with $27 million [worth over $51 million today] you can use to cut federal taxes or reduce the deficit — not to mention the millions you will save by not adding our costs to the federal INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] budget.”
Lang said the federal government was not helping the CNMI by giving it money. “We have grown up and with adulthood the handouts end. You will actually be helping us by taking them away.” He then reminded Gallegly that U.S. immigration law and the INS had failed to check the flow of illegal immigrants in the U.S., notably in California. “Certainly, the people of your own state have not been well-served by the federal immigration system,” Lang said. He added that federal immigration law had not helped prevent abuses in the states and would not help the CNMI.
For Lang, federalization “[is] the worst thing that the Congress can do to us.” In an interview with Willens, he said the “idea is that we can’t do things ourselves, we can’t take care of our own problems over here, and Washington, D.C. should take care of us…is the mentality in Washington, D.C. on the territories. That’s how they feel. That we, the natives in the territories, can’t take care of ourselves, so they’ll take care of us over there. Recently I’ve been telling Washington, D.C. to let the territories go. Leave them alone and let them take care of their own problems. Let them learn to stand on their own feet rather than every time there’s a problem they do something about it.”
The feds’ reply, I believe, was hell no.
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Froilan C. Tenorio
