There should be cuts to the budget and they have to be personnel cuts. Someone, moreover, will need to identify and keep essential services going so those pesky distinctions will have to be made. And let’s be clear about one thing. Austerity cuts, even though they feel fair, aren’t fair. Every government official is passing that responsibility on to the next guy. Legislators are deferring to agency heads without examining just how these agencies propose to make the cuts, which, in the case of the hospital, could be injurious to your health.
Private power producers, for their part, have long been on record as stating that CUC has way too many non-essential employees on its payroll. It is widely known that for at least 10 years, CUC was the favorite dumping ground for politicians, adding to the total number of employees and ballooning the agency’s budget. Yet there is no call from any quarter to riff non-essential CUC personnel. There are, to be sure, many good employees at CUC and there is no doubt everyone at the agency knows just who they are. They should be retained. Non-essential employees, however, are just that, non-essential, and someone should be looking at the budget coldly to determine what cuts need to be made to save CUC.
The hospital is another agency in turmoil. Its new and expensive dialysis center has yet to open. The governor declared a state of emergency for the pharmacy, but there is no word yet if there is a permanent solution to its long-standing problem. The Department of Public Health claims it needs more funding. This may be true but we’re quite sure it also needs new and better management.
Meanwhile, the Fitial administration and Public Health bosses are making and will continue to make cuts that are not in the best interest of health care in the CNMI. Switching to cheaper labor doesn’t assure quality health care. High turnover rates are also not good for employee morale or for the delivery of quality health care. It takes time for foreign employees to learn and adopt U.S. standards of practice. Even new Western trained and certified personnel need time to adapt to the “unique” work environment at the hospital. Just as there are solid employees at CUC, there are reliable employees at the hospital, and their positions should be protected not because of who they are, but because of the good service they deliver to the community.
However, as long as the budget process doesn’t recognize the importance of these golden management standards, the CNMI government will continue to operate in a survival spiral. Private sector managers, in contrast, are already making tough decisions that affect the lives of real people — people with children to support and with financial obligations to uphold. The private sector knows it no longer has a choice.
The CNMI government should realize that it, too, can no longer postpone these kinds of decisions.
