GOVERNOR Ralph DLG Torres’ fiscal year 2023 spending plan for American Rescue Plan Act funds “is completely irresponsible and totally reckless,” Rep. Tina Sablan said.
The spending plan prioritizes pay raises for certain government officials over the operations of departments and agencies, she added.
“We can’t only fund salary increases for certain people and not fund [government] operations. Can you run a government like that? You can’t,” Sablan said in an interview on Wednesday.
Sablan, the NMI Democratic Party’s gubernatorial candidate, said they in the House leadership are very concerned about the Torres administration’s spending plan for ARPA funds, particularly the salary increase for certain government officials.
In his revised FY 2023 budget submission on July 1, the governor said the administration will spend $32 million in ARPA monies which the federal government provided to the CNMI to help recover from the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Included in the governor’s ARPA spending plan is a total of $881,965 for certain executive branch officials’ pay raises. The governor’s ARPA spending proposal can be seen at https://cnmileg.net/resources/files/Documents/REVISED%20FY%202023_VOLUME%20IV_ARPA%20FUND%20070622.pdf
Sablan said the governor’s FY 2023 budget submission “really says nothing about how we are going to fund operations, [it] says nothing about the 25% of the retirees’ pensions, and there is no accounting for the local match required for Medicaid. There’s a lot that is missing in the budget, and the priorities are very skewed.”
As for the governor’s ARPA plan, Sablan said “that is another problem.”
“There really has not been very much transparency at all about how ARPA monies are being spent, how any CNMI government funds are being spent or moved around under the guise of responding to Covid-19,” she added.
Answers
Asked for comment, the governor issued the following statement:
“Secretary of Finance David DLG Atalig has provided the Legislature with answers to their concerns over the use of ARPA funding for the retirees’ 25%, which is not something we can do with any of the ARPA funding given to the CNMI. The Legislature has been, and still is, encouraged to locate new sources of funding to pay for the 25%. The House has not passed a revenue generating bill to provide funding for this 25%, as there are also no casino BGRT collections in this fiscal year that can be used for the retirees’ 25%.
“As for the concerns from the House majority regarding operations within the budget, operations for the CNMI government will be funded through unused ARPA funding that will be carried over from FY 2022 and allocations from ARPA for FY 2023.
“My administration continues to work hard to revive this tourism industry and explore ways to develop other industries to generate revenue for the Commonwealth,” the governor added.
