Existing federal grants, he added, will probably continue but the people who are administering and are directly paid out of the grants may be affected by the shutdown.
“We’re talking about a possible shutdown, temporarily, of some federal offices here,” Inos said.
He said the administration is now putting together a team which, within the next day or two, will try to assess how a possible federal government shutdown would affect some of the critical services here like airport, immigration and customs.
“We all hope that a shutdown will not happen,” Inos said, noting that the local people already felt the pain during the partial CNMI government shutdown in October due to the Legislature’s failure to pass a new budget.
Office of Insular Affairs field representative Jeff Schorr said a lot of people believe there is a good chance the federal government will not shut down.
He agrees that if such a thing happens, all federal offices here will be affected.
But, he added, “I would be surprised if there’s a [U.S.] government shutdown.”
Inos said the administration wants to address this concern with Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan.
He said Gov. Benigno R. Fitial brought with him to Washington, D.C. a copy of House Joint Resolution 17-28 which the House and Senate passed earlier this week.
The governor, Inos said, will meet with Sablan and give him a copy of the resolution which requests the delegate to sponsor a bill that will allow the CNMI to use, on a temporary basis, unexpended CIP funds for government operations.
Inos made it clear though that “when we say operations we are not talking about general operations” but something that will alleviate the “funding pressure” on public health, public safety and education.
He said the administration is also looking at federal grants that are awarded to the CNMI every year. These are the multi-year grants, he added.
He noted that some recipient agencies get new funding while still in the process of spending the funds awarded in previous years.
“So we are looking at that to see if there’s a way that we could be allowed to use those to help defray related type expenses,” he said.
He said the administration is aware of the funding deficit at the national level. He can’t say if efforts in the U.S. Congress to take away discretionary funds would be successful.
But at least, he added, the CNMI government is doing all it can to cushion the commonwealth from the impact of any grim possibilities.
“The least we could do is to try. We’re hurting,” he said.
At the local level, he said the administration has already been working with the Legislature to improve the economy by enacting bills that will bring in more investments.
“I think we got a better understanding from the painful lesson last year. So we are not going to repeat that this year. We have an assurance from Legislature that they will act and start working on the budget,” he said.
The new budget must be passed on or before Oct. 1 this year.
