If, as legislators now claim, the administration continues to hire new and unnecessary employees numbering near 1,000, why haven’t there been any oversight hearings? Why has no one among lawmakers questioned the number of important vacancies left at the hospital or the budget office?
And why did the Office of Public Auditor choose audit letters over audit reports as its audit instrument over a period of more than 10 years? OPA also adopted a ridiculous practice of reminding the Attorney General’s Office of infractions that occurred nearly 15 years ago, altogether avoiding infractions for this year or last year, of which there are many.
Taken together, what we are witnessing is the collective breakdown of a system.
In the states, former Sen. Tom Daschle had to withdraw his cabinet nomination from consideration because ethics matter; conflicts of interest matter. But the entire system begins to break down when over an extended period of time all the important guidelines and regulations are disregarded in the name of expediency. Even logic is abandoned.
Consider the case of the newly appointed ambassador-at-large position created for Lynn Knight, an executive of the governor’s favorite company. If Tan Holdings is confident that Knight’s representation in Washington, D.C. is essential to its business interests, then it should support and shoulder the cost of her presence in the nation’s capital or solicit funds from the private sector. This is appropriate. What may be inappropriate is the governor’s saying that Ms. Knight also represents him in Washington, D.C.
This may be a problem. There is at least the appearance of a conflict of interest regarding whether Knight represents her, well, famous corporation or this government. It is also not clear to the general public what specific interests Knight is to represent while in Washington, D.C. Will she lobby on labor issues, wages, or immigration policy? Why should the governor send her to Washington when CNMI voters have just elected their first delegate to the U.S. Congress?
The Legislature, however, is mute on many of these issues, and this too, is a problem. The CNMI has three separate branches of government, each with its own powers to provide the necessary checks and balances in the system. When one branch of government fails to perform in accordance with its mandate, the other branches of government exist to check it.
Sadly, the system is currently not functioning the way it was designed to.
The people, for their part, also have a responsibility for the way their government functions. They must evaluate the mess on Capital Hill and determine at election time whether the system and their leaders are serving the public interest. There is a lot at stake in the general elections in November, and voters can either turn things around or be content to just hope that they will survive the further decline that will surely come.
