THE Civil Service Commission and the Office of Personnel Management should be “non-partisan and independent” according to OPM Director Juan I. Tenorio.
He said OPM is supporting the passage of H.B. 13-126 introduced by House Speaker Heinz S. Hofschneider, R-Saipan, which seeks to bring back OPM to CSC which is currently under the Office of the Governor.
“The placement of OPM under CSC fulfills the intent of Article 20 of the CNMI Constitution for the administration of personnel policies to be non-partisan and independent,” said Tenorio in a June 18 letter he submitted to the Special Committee on H.B. 13-126 chaired by Rep. Stanley T. Torres, R-Saipan.
Tenorio said he also felt that the measure’s intent of maintaining CSC’s non-partisan and independent status must extend to the activities of individual commissioners and staff especially on their involvement in politics.
“(This prohibition) must include public political involvement or any such political behavior that compromises their non-partisan and independent status. This…should also extend to the personnel officer and all the staff of OPM. Violation of this restriction would result in disciplinary action or removal,” he said.
Tenorio recommended that the qualifications for the personnel officer be set at a higher level “to ensure that he possesses the appropriate education and experience to manage and direct the personnel functions of the commonwealth.”
He said the bill should include a provision that an appointee to the position of personnel officer should have a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field of study and 10 years of progressive work experience in personnel administration, with five of these years at a management level and should subscribe to the principles of merit system.
But Tenorio did not concur with the bill’s proposed re-enactment of a statute used for designating contract employees such as doctors, medical and ancillary staff, attorneys and others.
He said that under H.B. 13-126, this statute was reworded and used to expand the civil service ungraded category of employee with positions now filled by employees contracted from outside the CNMI and categorized as excepted service employees.
He said this “major restructuring” of the excepted and civil service systems would result in the civil service system including both contracted and non-contracted local employees “as civil service ungraded staff.”
As the existing civil service regulations do not have any provisions for expatriation and repatriation travel or housing allowance, Tenorio said amendments to the regulation “would be instantly required to accommodate this new category of civil service employees.”
