Committee Chairman Ramon S. Basa, Covenant-Saipan, said he hopes the House will act quickly on H.B. 17-96 as time is of the essence.
FY 2011 starts on Oct. 1.
Aside from fine-tuning the language of some provisions, the bill’s new version also reduced some figures.
From $8.5 million, the allotment for the legislative branch was reduced to $7.6 million for its 208 full-time employees.
This new figure is still higher than the Legislature’s current budget of $6.1 million.
Basa said the allotment for the Legislative Bureau was reduced from $1.7 million to $1 million.
The allotments for the judiciary and executive branches remain $3.3 million for 74 FTEs and $57.7 million for 1,575 FTEs.
The spending level for Tinian was slightly increased from $6.024 to $6.2 million for 251 FTEs.
The “miscomputation” in the $2.8 million appropriated for Department of Public Lands was also corrected, Basa said.
The bill’s original version stated that $1,305,782 will go to DPL’s operations.
But this was the wrong figure. The correct amount is $805,782.
Rep. Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero, R-Saipan, noted that there are agencies that have not disclosed the number of their FTEs.
He urged the committee to require those agencies to provide this information.
These agencies are the Commonwealth Ports Authority, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. and the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission.
