SPEAKER Edmund S. Villagomez and Senate President Jude U. Hofschneider have followed up on their request to Gov. Ralph DLG Torres to form a joint American Rescue Plan Act Task Force.
In their joint letter, the Legislature’s presiding officers said in keeping with their role in the CNMI Constitution as the first branch of government, “it is our task to ensure that there is a balanced budget, one that fairly allocates the government resources to all three branches.”
Accordingly, “we hereby reiterate our request to establish a joint ARPA Task Force that will work together with you to allocate the ARPA funds via a comprehensive spending plan and in a manner that brings all three branches and their concerns to the table.”
The speaker and the Senate president said the goal of a joint ARPA Task Force is to “create a clearly written and transparent spending plan as soon as possible so that we can provide this plan to the federal authorities in compliance with ARPA requirements and provide the CNMI with the funds necessary to recover from the adverse consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Saying that the federal law allows the CNMI government to spend the monies in two fiscal years, the governor earlier informed lawmakers that he would allot $122.5 million of the CNMI’s $515 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for the Commonwealth government’s operations in fiscal year 2022. Furloughed employees will be recalled, and all employees will return to an 80-hour work schedule, he said.
