OVER 20 employees of the Commonwealth Casino Commission received their termination letters last week.
The issuance of termination letters was carried out in light of the commission’s dwindling financial resources.
In an email on Monday, Casino Commission Executive Director Andrew Yeom said due to budget constraints, “we served 60-day termination letters/notices without cause for roughly 20 CCC employees.”
Yeom said some of their other employees have resigned because they found new jobs.
“All in all, this staff termination/separation turned out to be around 60% workforce reduction for CCC,” the executive director said.
“Unfortunately, furlough is not an option for us as an autonomous agency [according to the Attorney General’s Office], thus this termination. It is sad and unfortunate, but a decision had to be made to smartly and cost effectively defend the Commonwealth against any present and future legal challenges,” Yeom said.
The casino commission, he added, retained its core employees “to efficiently address our critical needs with the mindset that our budget won’t be replenished for a long while.”
At the same time, he said, they have talked and will continue to talk with various government departments to see if the vast majority of casino commission employees can be hired elsewhere.
“We really have recruited attractive candidates at CCC and I see that many will [eventually be hired by another] government [agency] or [by the] private sector,” Yeom said.
One of those who received a termination letter told Variety that they were assured they will be eligible for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
Created by Public Law 18-56 with the advent of the casino industry on Saipan, the casino commission is dependent on the $3 million regulatory fee that the now beleaguered casino investor Imperial Pacific International is required to pay annually.
In the last regular meeting of the casino commission last month, its chairman, Edward C. Deleon Guerrero, told his fellow commissioners that the regulatory body was facing a serious budget crisis, and might reduce the number of its personnel.
“And should this budget crisis continue, we have to tighten up the belt even more,” he added.
Variety was told that most of the divisions of the casino commission had to terminate their staffers. These include Compliance, Administrative, Enforcement and Investigations, and Permit and Licensing.
House Gaming Committee Chairman Edwin Propst said, “It is heartbreaking when any frontline workers lose their jobs.”
“My question is, why? If the administration returned to CCC the $2 million they borrowed for Covid, isn’t there enough to keep all workers? If management and frontline workers had their hours cut to 64 hours, what about the commissioners? Have they also taken cuts?” Propst asked.
He said if IPI cannot pay what it owes, it is time to revoke its license. “We seem to never learn from our mistakes,” he added.
In April, the casino commission suspended IPI’s gaming license for failure to comply with five orders relating to its various obligations.
The commission likewise imposed a total of $6.6 million in fines and ordered IPI to pay its outstanding obligations totaling $18.6 million.
IPI’s casino shut down in March 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
