“Governor Calvo, Lt. Governor Tenorio, their senior staff (including me) took a 10 percent pay cut effective mid-August. Money on top of the 10 percent cut is being deducted from our paychecks to cover the pay periods that went by between the end of August and the end of September, when the paperwork for the pay cuts was going through the system,” Torres said in a press release.
In addition, Torres said there was a legal question as to whether the governor and the lt. governor could take a “pay cut” since their salaries are set by law.
“But they decided simply to deduct the amount voluntarily. To our knowledge, the governor and lt. governor are the only elected officials to take a voluntary pay cut this year,” Torres added.
He urged the public to call the Guam Legislature or Pangelinan’s budget office “to know whether other elected officials have taken a pay cut.”
Pangelinan claimed that through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Administration, he discovered that the 10 percent cut had not been initiated.
He said he found that no salaries have been cut and the governor’s office was “trying to cover it up.”
