In a brief interview last Friday, Inos said, “we have not seen any approval from the federal agencies” to include the federally funded programs in the austerity measures.
The austerity measure that Fitial administration recently imposed affected some employees working on federally funded programs although the fiscal year 2012 budget exempts them.
But in another interview last Saturday, Inos, who signed the budget law acting in capacity as the governor said implementing austerity measures is an administrative function.
He said the federal grantors are “acquiescence” to this action by the Fitial administration.
In an email, Press Secretary Angel A. Demapan said the governor does not require approval to reduce work hours for the central government, regardless of the funding source for salaries.
“Remember that in most cases, federally funded salaries do not necessarily translate into federally funded utilities, fuel, or supplies to name a few,” he said.
Demapan also said that the governor has requested federal program managers to seek approval from the grantors to reprogram anticipated funding lapses. But the reprogramming effort will be from personnel to operations costs.
However, Demapan said this action does not happen until it is approved.
In a separate interview, Speaker Eli D. Cabrera said they, in the House of Representatives should not be questioning the governor’s authority to implement austerity measures even on federally funded programs, especially if he, the governor has an approval from the grantors.
Fitial, he noted came out in the news saying he has approval from the federal grantors.
“Why should we question that?” the speaker asked.
Cabrera said he will appreciate it if the administration will provide the Legislature a copy of letters from the federal grantors approving cuts in the work hours of federally funded employees.
In a telephone interview Friday night, (Saipan time) Congressman Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan said reducing the work hours of federally funded employees here “does not help the employees, does not help the program and does not help the commonwealth.”
Sablan said he has no information that several agencies have given written approval for the reduction of hours and program costs because of the Fitial administration’s austerity measure.
