THE Saipan Chamber of Commerce, on behalf of its members, the rest of the business community and future entrepreneurs, is asking Gov. Ralph DLG Torres to veto House Bill 21-19, which proposes to impose new and higher government fees amid the worst economic crisis in the CNMI.
Velma Palacios
Authored by Rep. Joseph Leepan Guerrero, the bill was passed by the Senate with amendments last week and is back in the House of Representatives, which may act on it on Thursday.
In her letter to the governor, chamber president Velma Palacios recalled that when H.B. 21-19 was introduced in the House in the spring of 2019, the chamber worked with the Department of Commerce secretary “to find ways to both encourage entrepreneurship while assisting the department…in moving to an online platform.”
She added, “It was promised that the increase in fees for Commerce would go towards modernizing the department by moving all filing online by 2022. These discussions with the Chamber, Commerce, and the House Ways and Means Committee led to the draft of H.B. 21-19, HS1.”
However, she added, “the CNMI is in a vastly different economy than we were experiencing in the spring of 2019 when these discussions first arose.”
“Now more than ever,” she said, “we need to encourage families to start businesses and for businesses to expand their operations. Raising fees in the middle of a pandemic will result in the reverse intended effect, lowering overall government revenue as more people either illegally operate or avoid starting their own businesses altogether.”
A 50% to 150% increase in fees may not seem significant to the government, Palacios said, “but for the entrepreneur who is bootstrapping their new business with the hopes to provide for their families, it means a great deal.”
“As we have noted in the past,” she added, “the best way to create more economic stability for the government is by encouraging entrepreneurship — not discouraging it by raising fees.”
She said encouraging entrepreneurship means expanding opportunities to create new businesses and reducing “barriers that halter their success.”
Encouraging entrepreneurship will lead to higher tax collections, more employment for our people, and better services for our community, Palacios added.
But “raising fees for the sake of raising fees, when online technology should make it more cost-effective and efficient to process applications, is demoralizing for our exhausted business owners and overwhelmed entrepreneurs,” she said.
“Because of the pandemic, the [economic downturn], the desperate need to encourage entrepreneurship, and the Department of Finance’s record of modernizing technology without raising fees, we ask that you veto H.B. 21-19, HS1, and encourage your colleagues to cease moving forward with initiatives to raise fees for Commerce,” Palacios urged the governor.
