SPEAKER Edmund S. Villagomez on Thursday said he appreciates the Senate for “taking time to entertain” House Bill 22-33, which calls for “accountability and transparency” in the expenditure of the over $481 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds provided to the CNMI.
Although the Senate did not act on the bill whose constitutionality was questioned by Attorney General Edward Manibusan, the speaker noted that the Senate discussed the measure “sooner than I expected.”
During the Senate session on Tuesday, Sen. Paul A. Manglona moved to place the measure on the bill calendar for action. The other minority bloc senator, Edith Deleon Guerrero, seconded the motion.
Senate President Jude U. Hofschneider then sought the opinion of Senate legal counsel Jose Bermudes who recommended that the measure remain in the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee chaired by Sen. Victor B. Hocog while Bermudes reviews the AG’s opinion and the opinion of the House legal counsels.
The House vote on the bill, which is backed by the House leadership, was 10-10. Villagomez invoked a rule allowing the speaker to vote “twice,” and declared that the bill had been “passed” by the House.
No public hearings were conducted and no committee report was attached to the bill before the House leadership acted on it.
The AG, for his part, said the CNMI Constitution’s Article II Section 5(c) states that “the legislature may not enact a law except by bill and no bill may be enacted without the approval of at least a majority of the votes cast in each house of legislature.’”
The AG said, “There is no tie-breaker rule provided in [the CNMI Constitution’s] Section 5(c) or anywhere else under the Constitution to get around the threshold of ‘majority of votes cast.’”
Before the House leadership acted on the bill, the AG’s office informed the members that there was no need for it, and that the federal law includes restrictions and other rules that the CNMI must follow.
The Office of the Public Auditor also questioned the bill’s provision that would saddle OPA with an “unrealistic mandate” and affect its independence.
In an interview on Thursday, Senator Manglona said the Senate president and the chair of the Fiscal Affairs Committee, made the assurance that H.B. 22-33 would be “entertained again” in their next session.
Manglona said the Senate majority “made it loud and clear during the session that I did not have the vote for passage and that they were going to vote down my motion. But after getting the majority’s assurance that the bill would be placed on our next Senate session’s Final Reading calendar for a vote, that’s when I withdrew my motion.”
He added, “We should not do what we did with the budget last year when the Legislature gave up and relinquished our authority 100% to the governor. With H.B. 22-33, we have the opportunity to take action on the tremendous financial challenges we face. We must not relinquish ever again our responsibility to balance the budget as the first branch of government and give away 100% of the Legislature’s power of the purse.”
Speaker Villagomez said, “The fact that the measure was discussed in the Senate session goes to show that maybe there is some consideration, and maybe they just need to do more research or more work on the bill as to how to go about it.”
He said he did not expect that the Senate leadership would entertain the bill, but added that “there is always a way to…compromise…to push the measure so we’ll see where it goes from there.”
Edmund S. Villagomez
