“We already [overrode the governor’s veto and] passed the budget and it says cut where you need to cut,” he said.
Drafted by the Fitial administration and introduced by Rep. Victor B. Hocog, Ind.-Rota, House Bill 16-223 will require austerity Fridays and unpaid holidays throughout FY 2009, which ends on Sept. 30.
It will also reduce the government’s monthly contribution rate to the Retirement Fund from 18 to 11 percent.
The governor said without these measures, the government’s contractual employees will lose their jobs.
“It is the governor who is threatening to lay off people, not the Legislature,” said Palacios, R-Saipan. “He made the same threat when we were considering Retirement Fund legislation. The previous austerity holidays were passed because he threatened to furlough people, but at the end of the day there were no savings because it turned out that he was paying for the people he continued to hire.”
The public, Palacios added, “has already seen through these threats.”
The FY 2009 budget law allows department and agency heads to reduce their costs so that government spending will reflect the revised revenue projection of $148 million — which was set by the administration.
“What the governor wants are austerity measures that punish low-income employees while exempting a lot of other workers and without resulting in any significant savings at all,” Palacios said. “He also wants 100 percent reprogramming authority so he can shift funds and hire more nonessential employees.”
The new budget law restricts the governor’s ability to hire new employees
“The only thing that is unfortunate is that we have folks that were hired on a 90-day basis,” the speaker said. “They were given false hopes of employment — provisional employment based on no resources.”
Palacios noted that the governor is required to submit to the Legislature a new budget proposal for FY 2010 on April 1.
“As soon as he gives it to us, we’ll work on it,” Palacios said.
