Ten months after they were sworn in, what do lawmakers have to show? The new fiscal year starts on Wednesday next week, but there is still no new budget. We have yet to see measures that could improve the business climate or offer a long-term solution to the power crisis. Instead, lawmakers went along with the governor’s proposal to double government fees and passed a CUC privatization bill that even supporters of privatization cannot stomach.
This Legislature allowed the governor to seize control of CUC and CPA and ram the Aggreko contract down the people’s throats. Lawmakers, in fact, are falling all over themselves to express their willingness to work with an administration that continues to defy public opinion and abuse its powers.
Whatever happened to checks and balances?
Lawmakers, moreover, cannot explain why their colleague who is running for congressional delegate has yet to resign — in clear defiance of the CNMI Constitution. Senators recently confirmed a judicial nominee without a public hearing.
The people are fed up. The protest actions and the calls for recalling or impeaching the governor clearly show that business as usual no longer works. But the people can no longer expect meaningful reforms from this once promising Legislature. The concerned members of the community have to organize and stage more mass actions to resist the ill-advised policies of this administration and Legislature. They must also elect new leaders who are as disgusted as they are with the old school politics practiced on Capital Hill.
THE new fiscal year is about to start which means that a new government budget cycle has begun. The last spending measure, passed in 2006, was pegged higher than government collections and although the administration at one time threatened to furlough 300 employees, it did not.
Government collections are expected to decline further, but there have been dozens of new hirings. Expect a closed door deal hammered out between the governor and lawmakers that dispenses with budget hearings and any scrutiny on government operations, revenue collections and expenditures. The administration will again try to shift the burden for personnel cuts to the Legislature, which will fold. Public services and not unneeded personnel will be cut.
As the CNMI’s elected officials labor under corruption charges and all the hallmarks of incompetence, the brave segments of the community must exercise the only option left in this free society: Dissent. But protest must also include a willingness to correctly identify the problems and their root causes.
THINGS cannot change without an examination of how the community arrived at this horrible mess we are now facing. It is easy, for example, to blame outside forces, the negative aspects of economic development and the rising fuel costs for the island’s power crisis.
But what about the forces that gave utility operations to poorly qualified individuals, the corrupt procurement practices that prevent the CNMI from securing a reliable private firm to run the utility, the millions of dollars that were misappropriated for goods and services not needed — the lack of any consequences for poor management and leadership?
As long as the governor continues to nominate poorly qualified individuals for important positions and as long as the Senate continues to confirm them, huge problems will continue to plague the CNMI. Transparency will be sacrificed for the sake of resolving an immediate crisis, which will be an excuse for yet another poor policy decision. The Legislature will create new boards and resurrect old ones but nothing will get done — except that more confusion will result and we will all go through the same cycle again.
Can anyone think of any reason why CUC needs advisory and regulatory boards? Boards, if not independent and not well appointed, are part of the problem. They add another layer of bureaucracy to an already sluggish process, creating a system that produces nothing.
The CNMI’s crises, in short, are products of local self-government. This is the crux of the problem. Solutions must be found locally. And this requires stark self-examination and some tough choices.
