In an interview Friday, MPLT Board Chairman Alvaro A. Santos said, “If push comes to shove, we will have to take strong measures.”
When pressed to confirm if MPLT may later decide on taking DPL to court, Santos replied, “Unfortunately, that can happen.” It has happened twice in the past.
He said that DPL has long argued that they used the money for the homestead program, but the law states that they should remit the money to MPLT.
As MPLT is mandated also by law to invest the net revenues from public land leases for the benefit of future Northern Marianas descendants, the agency is behooved to follow up and collect from DPL these land leases.
DPL last remitted $3.5 million to MPLT on Aug. 4, 2008.
On Oct. 5, 2011, MPLT sent a letter to DPL requesting records of all current land leases for public lands, permits and other permitted operations for which fees are collected.
In his response letter dated Oct. 12, DPL Secretary Oscar M. Babauta told Santos that providing these documents is “a gargantuan task.”
Babauta said MPLT’s request far exceeds the scope of the Open Government Act.
Babauta wrote, “DPL simply cannot and will not provide copies of every lease, permit, etc. to MPLT.”
He, however, said their office is looking to provide MPLT with manageable and useful information for MPLT’s review.
He also said DPL’s accounting department keeps up-to-date, accurate, and usable reports that should satisfy MPLT’s request for documents.
Babauta also wrote Santos that DPL is currently closing out its books for fiscal year 2011 and is diligently working to identify all funds owed to MPLT.
He also added that DPL would “soon be able to provide MPLT with an accounting.”
In an interview Friday, Santos cited the reasons provided by DPL on its inability to remit to MPLT.
He said MPLT was told that DPL would be awarding homestead grants on Rota and Tinian. MPLT was also advised that the money from leases was to be used to develop those homesteads, particularly the infrastructure.
Santos said he was told that the number of leases has decreased significantly with some public land leases in default, lessees not paying and some asking for relief or extension.
“The businesses are not doing very well,” he said.
Asked on the frequency of remittances by DPL to MPLT, Santos said, “The logical transfer of funds is annually.”
Asked if it were on a fiscal year, he said that was implied in the constitution.
“Their operations run on a fiscal year,” he said.
As DPL is not cooperating with MPLT in providing the reports it needed, MPLT could not ascertain as to how much the agency stands to receive from DPL.
Santos described this situation as “problematic” saying “they don’t share records.”
He said if only DPL were able to regularly remit land leases, MPLT would have invested the money in the market.
The unremitted funds, Santos said, comprise opportunities lost.
Had the agency been receiving between $2 million to $3 million annually in the years between 1991 to 2007, the investment corpus would have grown significantly.
Santos said, “Imagine if you pumped that into the corpus, it will have increased the growth of the corpus as well as earning abilities. So instead of $2 million a year, it could have gone up to $4 or 5 million. Those are opportunities lost,” he said.
MPLT could only hope for DPL to be more transparent with its records.
“With that kind of transparency then we understand the real situation — we can be more considerate,” Santos said.
Santos added that they are trying to be considerate and diplomatic about this.
“We don’t want to engage in lengthy confrontation about this,” he said.
He also said, “If one party is not cooperative, then we’ll take it to the next level.”
In a separate interview, MPLT board consultant Bruce MacMillan provided a background on the lawsuits filed by MPLT against DPL.
He said the lawsuits did not produce any results for MPLT.
He told Variety there was a previous arrangement for DPL to pay $1,000 a month plus interest but the settlement was ultimately rescinded with the understanding the both agencies would be more cooperative.
For MacMillan, the lawsuit was expensive and was not productive.
He said, “Hopefully we will get some cooperation this time and get some accounting.”
