SECRETARY of Finance David DLG Atalig on Friday said the U.S. Treasury has until May 10 to send the guidelines on the expenditure of the $515 million allocated for the CNMI through the American Rescue Plan Act.
In the meantime, he said, Finance is ready to submit the basic requirements that the U.S. Treasury is requesting, such as proper accounts to ensure that funds are transferred to the CNMI.
On Friday morning, he was on a conference call with the U.S. Treasury to discuss provisions in the ARPA for U.S. states and territories.
As the CNMI awaits these much-needed federal guidelines for the ARPA Act, Secretary Atalig said the Office of Grants Management and State Clearinghouse has been conducting workshops with different departments and agencies on how they can avail themselves of relevant funding through the Act.
“We also continue to [fine-tune] the distribution of those funds. One of the major ones, as we’ve mentioned in the past, are the revenues that the Commonwealth lost due to the pandemic, and so we are restoring all of our departments and agencies to the 2019 budget levels, and then we’ll get them back to pre-Covid operations.”
He added, “That’s the best thing for us to do so that we can continue providing good services to our community as well as get people back to work and stir up economic activity within our islands.”
Regarding concerns from the CNMI Democrats in the House of Representatives about the allocations of these funds, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said he has been meeting with both Speaker Edmund Villagomez and Senate President Jude Hofschneider regarding this issue.
The governor said he will continue to ensure that the deficit is addressed, retirees receive their pensions, furloughed employees are recalled and government employees return to 80-hour pay periods while the administration addresses other priorities of the CNMI.
“I can go on and on, but at the end of the day, again, we are working with the secretary of Finance, [the Office of Management and Budget], Lt. Gov. [Arnold I. Palacios], and we’ll share [our discussions] with [the lawmakers],” Torres said.
