The draft Senate substitute of House Bill 17-215 was being reviewed as of press time yesterday by the Senate’s legal counsel but Senate Floor Leader Pete P. Reyes disclosed how it is different from the bill the House of Representatives passed on Wednesday.
Reyes, R-Saipan, said their substitute bill will “zero” the leadership accounts and discretionary funds for both houses and add the amounts to the budgets of the Public School System and Northern Marianas College in order to meet their maintenance of effort funding level.
The Senate version will indentify the $1.9 million Compact-Impact fund as among the financial resources to be appropriated to the Department of Public Safety, PSS and NMC.
Senate President Paul A. Manglona, Ind.-Rota, said it’s the first time in history that the budget bill was transmitted to the Senate in September.
Last year’s budget was transmitted to the Senate in August and those from previous years were transmitted even earlier.
Reyes said he appreciates the fact that the FY 2012 budget bill finally passed the House, “but it took them five months.”
The Senate now has two weeks at the most to act on the bill because the CNMI Constitution mandates the enactment of a budget by Oct. 1.
The administration must have at least 20 days to review the bill, he added.
Tax ourselves
Reyes said if changing the salary of lawmakers is unconstitutional, he believes imposing more taxes on them is not.
It doesn’t mean that just because the CNMI Constitution protects their salaries, elected officials should not share the “pain” of other government employees who have to endure for another year the austerity measures, Reyes said.
“It is not unconstitutional or illegal to impose a higher tax rate, so let us tax ourselves,” Reyes said, referring to all elected officials including the governor and lt. governor.
H.B. 17-215, according to the House, does not raise lawmakers’ salary only their benefits which include the employer contributions to the Retirement Fund and group health insurance.
The Senate substitute bill, Reyes said, will impose up to 30 percent tax rate on all elected officials, particularly those whose salaries are protected by the Constitution, “so we can share the pain and sufferings of our people as a result of the austerities.”
Education is priority
Because H.B. 17-215 does not sufficiently give PSS and NMC adequate funding to help meet the maintenance of effort requirement of the federal government, the Senate version will scrap the leadership account and the individual members’ allocations.
H.B. 17-215 appropriates over $1 million to the House members’ allocations; $138,000 to the House leadership; $464,183 to the Senate members’ allocations; and $110,396 to the Senate leadership.
The Senate proposal to remove these allocations will give PSS and NMC a total of $1.7 million.
The Department of the Interior’s Compact-Impact grant assistance, which since 2010 has gone down from $5.1 million to $1.9 million, should appear on the list of revenues and cover the needs of PSS and NMC as well, Reyes said.
H.B. 17-215 allotted the Compact-Impact funds to the Office of Public Defender, the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Health and the Department of Public Safety.
During the House deliberations on the budget bill, Rep. Ray N. Yumul, R-Saipan, proposed to transfer to PSS and NMC, the portions of the local appropriations that can be replaced by Compact-Impact funds.
But the House leadership rejected Yumul’s proposal.
The Compact-Impact grants assistance, according to the U.S. Office of Insular Affair’s FY 2012 Budget Justification report, “may be used only for health, educational, social or public safety services, or infrastructure related to such services specifically affected by qualified non-immigrants.”
