AUTONOMOUS agencies “have almost never” remitted 1% of their allocations for the Office of the Public Auditor since 1996, and the amount has accumulated to approximately $30 million today, Public Auditor Kina B. Peter told the House Ways and Means Committee during a budget hearing on Wednesday.
OPA is supposed to receive 1% of the amounts appropriated by Commonwealth law for operations and activities, including all capital improvement projects, of all government agencies except the Legislature.
Peter said OPA has always received 1% of allocations from the general fund, but the autonomous agencies “have almost never made their 1% payments.”
The autonomous agencies include the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., the Commonwealth Ports Authority, the Commonwealth Development Authority, Northern Marianas College and the Marianas Visitors Authority.
Peter said OPA has kept track of the uncollected balance of the autonomous agencies since 1996, adding that it averaged about $1 million a year. So today, the amount owed cumulatively has reached about $30 million, she added.
But she said OPA has no claims to the full amount, nor is it able to claim prior fiscal years’ uncollected balances.
She said the $30 million, if collected, will not go to OPA, but will have to be remitted to the general fund.
Among the autonomous agencies, she said, CUC has the biggest balance.
In 2003, the CNMI government “did an offset with CUC, amounting to approximately $3 million.” The offset involved the government’s utility bills, Peter said.
She said OPA is now developing a plan for the collection of the 1% OPA fee from autonomous agencies. An OPA team, she added, will draft memoranda, discuss a payment plan with the autonomous agencies and try to get a commitment.
OPA legal counsel Ashley Kost joined Peter at the budget hearing, which was presided by the committee chairman, Rep. Donald Manglona.
Also present were Reps. Ivan Blanco, Edwin Propst, Ralph Yumul, Tina Sablan, Leila Staffler, Vicente Camacho, Celina Babauta and Richard Lizama.
Kina Peter
