The bill, introduced by Vice Speaker Felicidad Ogumoro, Covenant-Saipan and former SHEFA board chairwoman, will extend the financial assistance program to other educational programs.
Ogumoro also wants the inclusion of an “early admission” educational program so that more deserving students who meet the residency requirement can apply and receive financial assistance from SHEFA which is funded by poker fee collections.
The bill, moreover, will amend the qualifying provision, saying the current definition of “residency” is obscure, and is not clear regarding a person’s abode.
While Hofschneider finds the “bill to be very important,” the proposed amendment is a “mouthful.”
“We respectfully recommend that you allow the board of SHEFA an opportunity to sit with you and discuss some of its concerns,” he told Rep. Antonio P. Sablan, Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation chairman of the Committee on Health, Education and Welfare.
In his letter to Sablan, Hofschneider noted that the bill will require an applicant to be a registered voter on Saipan for at least five years before applying for SHEFA financial assistance. This “raises a couple of questions if read very carefully,” Hofschneider added.
“If our reading of the proposed amendment to 10 CNM § 3921 (e) is on point and it is the local delegation’s true intent that it drafted it that way, then we have stated our concern. No applicant between the ages of 18 and 23 would be eligible because of the five-year voting requirement,” he said.
Hofschneider said the bill’s proposal that an applicant below 18 years old would be eligible to receive SHEFA financial assistance if that applicant’s parent can prove the applicant’s domiciliary, residency and citizenship “runs counter to the [other proposed] requirement that an applicant must be a registered voter and have voted on Saipan for at least five years before applying for financial assistance.”
