“Sadly, vandalism persists, leaving both physical damage and damage to our reputation as a beautiful and peaceful leisure destination.” She believes that “by eliminating the opportunities for youths to learn from and then imitate adult criminals engaging in vandalism, we can reduce repair costs to the government and the private sector and welcome tourists to a safe and clean vacation environment.”
The senator is right. Laws must be enforced. But it is also the responsibility of parents, not just the police, to ensure that their children are not out in the streets late at night. In preventing juvenile delinquency, there is still no substitute for good parenting.
Incidentally, Public Law 15-129, a measure recommended by the Youth Congress and signed by the governor two years ago, increased the fine — from $500 to $750 — on parents, guardians and other adults who allow minors to stay out during curfew hours.
How many parents have been penalized under this law?
Anyone?
Another useless law
SAIPAN’S stray dog control law, S.L.L. 9-12, was enacted in the fall of 1995 but it has never been implemented, like many other CNMI laws.
Back then, lawmakers passed the measure because, they said, “stray dogs pose a serious health problem to the people of…Saipan in that stray dogs have wandered onto public roads creating a hazard to the safety of drivers as well as to the well-being of the dogs. [Moreover,] stray dogs frequently suffer from malnutrition and ill health and…have…created a safety hazard to pedestrians by chasing or attacking said pedestrians.”
Almost 15 years later and this “serious” problem remains unsolved. The previous mayor, who served for eight long years, pledged to enforce S.L.L. 9-12, but failed to do so, claiming that he “lacked funds” — which, strangely enough, didn’t prevent him from hiring his relatives and going on frequent junkets like nobody’s business.
To his credit, the new mayor has acknowledged that promising to implement S.L.L. 9-12 means, first of all, getting the required funding. He says he is working on it. In the meantime, he has assigned one of his employees to dispose of roadkill.
Ponder on that staggering fact. The mayor’s office of the commonwealth’s largest and most populated island has one staffer who performs a valuable public service while the Northern Islands, with four actual residents, has a mayor’s office that employs some 40 people doing…what exactly?
Consider, too, that the CNMI government has a bicameral legislature with 29 members and three legislative delegations; it has a governor, a lt. governor, four mayors, nine municipal council members, several department secretaries and division directors, various boards and commissions and a bureaucracy of some 4,000 personnel. This is a government that can hire anyone and even overpay them — yet it cannot implement its own laws, which continue to proliferate, like stray dogs.
A grateful NMI says‘Thank you Judge Munson’
FOR almost three decades, Federal Judge Alex R. Munson presided over numerous cases that have touched the lives of the people in this small community and clarified key aspects of the islands’ relationship with the U.S. His retirement today ends what is surely the most distinguished judicial career in NMI history.
Tall, silver-haired and stern-looking, Judge Munson cuts a formidable figure in and out of the courtroom. Although you may disagree with some of his rulings, you cannot doubt his competence, integrity and impartiality. Indeed, for many people on island, he personified the rule of law, and his decisions, time and again, showed that no one is above it.
He will be a tough act to follow, but it is our hope that the White House will choose as his successor someone who is as qualified, as capable and as honorable as Judge Munson.
