HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Lawmakers are laying out their spending goals in the upcoming budget for the government of Guam even before a final dollar figure for fiscal year 2024 has been agreed upon.
The Legislature on Wednesday morning was set to kick off budget talks with finance heads from the Office of the Governor and set the floor for budget negotiations, but held off until the afternoon so they could pore over a list of projected revenues.
A series of draft amendments to the budget act, some of them in the millions of dollars, were filed by senators before noon.
Biggest among them was $20 million that education co-chair Sen. Chris Duenas wants to give the Guam Department of Education for repairs and maintenance of school infrastructure. Provisions for raises, lease payments and other projects also have been proposed.
Duenas in April pushed through legislation that gave $20 million to GDOE for school repair, but the money ended up being reprogrammed by the Bureau of Budget and Management Research as part of a $50 million response to Typhoon Mawar.
The entire school system is reeling from the damage caused by Mawar, even as a hard deadline for compliance with sanitation regulations was backpedaled by lawmakers last week.
BBMR Director Lester Carlson told senators last month that former GDOE Superintendent Judi Won Pat had agreed to the $20 million transfer to speed up the removal of mold at schools post-typhoon.
The transfer has been a sore point for some lawmakers.
Duenas is seeking to hand over the cash initially meant for schools. A release from Duenas’ office states it can be used to help schools comply with sanitation and educational requirements, and hire skilled workers and equipment, among other things. The money would be taken from the General Fund, as a rollover provision from fiscal 2023.
“We understand the significance of a well-funded education system in nurturing the talents and potential of young minds,” Duenas said in a statement. “This amendment underscores our dedication to empowering the Guam Department of Education and their students, equipping them for success.”
A proposal from Vice Speaker Tina Muña Barnes would give the University of Guam authorization to tap into any excess tax collections that come in next year to fund salary adjustments for faculty. The amendment would allow UOG $3.6 million in excess tax revenue.
Sen. Amanda Shelton, who chairs the committee of higher education, wants to let the UOG Press get up to a third of GDOE’s $1.5 million funding for textbooks and instruction materials, to pay for the production or purchase of textbooks and other resources for public schools. The superintendent of education would have to sign off on the final amount, and get annual reports on any of the expenditures.
Spending cuts
Sen. Telo Taitague has proposed a number of cuts to expenditures in the budget act, including some that would provide pay incentives to government officials.
Taitague put forth a draft amendment to slash a 15% pay incentive for government defense lawyers working for the Public Defender Service Corp.
The pay incentive provision mirrors a proposal from Sen. Roy Quinata earlier this year that was meant to equalize pay between public defenders and their prosecution counterparts at the Office of the Attorney General. The proposed raises, according to the bill, would be retroactive to Oct. 1, 2022.
Taitague filed a draft amendment to delete a provision of the budget act that would increase the stipend Civil Service Commissioners get from $50 a meeting to $200 a meeting, with a cap of $1,000 a month.
Her final cut would slash the budget for the Bureau of Women’s Affairs for fiscal 2024 from $189,488.98 by a little over half.
Lawmakers and finance heads from Adelup reconvened Wednesday afternoon to work out a final projection for how much revenue from taxes and other sources GovGuam would rake in for fiscal 2023.
The initial proposal from the Legislature is set at a historic $1.1 billion.
Sens. Jesse Lujan, left, and Chris Duenas converse during a legislative session Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023, at the Guam Congress Building in Hagåtña.
