Rep. Fredrick P. Deleon Guerrero, Ind.-Saipan, said this should stop. Whatever assets were bought by legislative funds should stay with the office and the election precinct of the outgoing lawmaker, he said.
He has pre-filed House Bill 17-110 to prohibit the transfer of equipment and other fixed assets from one election precinct member’s account to another.
These “shall not be transferred also from one chamber to the other,” the bill stated.
It mandates the Legislative Bureau director to ensure a proper accounting and disposition of the items bought by each lawmaker.
The bureau “shall have procedures in identifying the items and where exactly the items are being kept.”
Thirty days before the end of lawmaker’s term, the bureau “shall conduct an inventory of all fixed assets and capital goods within the office of each lawmaker who will be liable for any unaccounted items.”
In an interview yesterday, Deleon Guerrero said some lawmakers who had just been elected to office ended up with almost nothing in a vacated office because the outgoing legislators decided to transfer their office equipment and other supplies to the offices of their party mates.
This practice, he said, is disadvantageous to independent lawmakers.
Deleon Guerrero said Public Law 15-72 mandates the bureau to keep an inventory of the Legislature’s fixed assets and capital goods, but it does not prohibit the transfer of equipment and supplies from one office to another, especially during the end of the lawmakers’ terms.
