“If anything, it’s worse than ever,” she said in an interview. “CUC still has the same cash flow problems, there’s still no maintenance, and there’s still mismanagement.”
It was Sablan, Ind.-Saipan, who earlier noted that CUC’s poor financial management was already a problem 16 years ago as disclosed by House oversight hearings.
Last week, CPUC’s consultant, Georgetown Consulting Group Inc., reported that CUC has no comprehensive plan to rehabilitate, Power Plant 1, the main source of electricity on Saipan.
Georgetown described the situation at the power plant as “horrendous,” and recommended “installing a new culture of performance and accountability” at CUC.
“Many reasonable people should agree that the government should get out of running our utilities,” Sablan said. “But the question now is, Where do we go from here? How do we proceed to privatization, what should be the process?”
Lawmakers have already enacted a measure to privatize CUC, and there are at least two pending bills to amend this law, but Sablan still believes that “receivership is the better option.”
Last September, Sablan and other citizen advocates asked the federal government to place CUC under federal court-appointed receivership until such time that CUC’s financial condition is stabilized, and it is completely restructured to ensure that the agency is “transparent, accountable, reliable, credible, and free of destructive political interferences in the future.”
Under receivership, Sablan said, CUC will be run in a business-like manner and will be insulated from politics.
The case of Guam’s Ordot Dump can serve as a model for CUC, she added.
Last March, the federal court on Guam appointed a solid waste management consulting firm as the dump’s receiver to ensure the territorial government’s compliance with the Clean Water Act as stipulated in a consent decree approved by the court more than four years ago.
