THE $9.8 million reimbursement that the CNMI government will receive from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is likely to go to the payment of outstanding debts, Gov. Arnold I. Palacios said on Monday.
U.S. Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, in his e-newsletter, stated that the CNMI government is receiving from FEMA $9.8 million in reimbursement for expenses incurred in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The reimbursement covers over $8 million for expenditures related to alternate care sites while the remaining $1.788 million is for expenses related to Covid-19 testing.
In the press conference Monday, the governor said he had asked Finance Secretary Tracy B. Norita how much the CNMI government has paid Kanoa Resort as an alternate care site and how much is still owed to the hotel.
The governor said some of the reimbursements will go to the general fund because the CNMI government used its own funds to pay for Covid-19 costs.
“If you ask the Finance secretary, sometimes she scares me, because she [said] we still have close to $30 million in outstanding debt to vendors,” the governor said.
The governor said the CNMI government has not paid “many vendors,” which is “crazy” because the Commonwealth supposedly received a total of $600 million in federal funds….”
It just “baffles the mind,” he said. “But that’s the situation we are in, that is why need and we were able to accelerate the contracting of a 2021 and 2022 audit.”
