All those years
AT the recent “Industry Day” event hosted by NAVFAC, the governor said such gatherings “should have been held five years ago” — the year before the pandemic. At the time, the local tourism industry was still recovering from Yutu, and the governor was the lt. governor, having previously been Senate president, House speaker, department secretary, and division director. The governor, in fact, has been an elected official since 2002. During all those years, has he ever publicly mentioned a “critical” need for NAVFAC Industry Day events?
What we distinctly remember him saying early last year was that he didn’t want “to go out and raise taxes again and impose the penalty on the businesses and the people of the Commonwealth….” But then he did exactly that — he proposed tax hikes. We now expect him and his legislative allies to push for additional tax hike measures once a new Legislature is sworn in early next year.
At the fiscal response summit over four years ago, the participating CNMI officials — many of whom are still in office — came up with several cost-cutting measures that would reduce the size of government and its annual costs. “This is something that our Commonwealth should have done a long time ago,” said the lt. governor at the time, who is now the governor.
Today, on Capital Hill, there are plenty of tax-hike measures (and more to come), but not a single proposal to eliminate or at least consolidate redundant government entities and programs.
As Robert Byrne would put it, “A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.”
Promises promises
WITH three weeks left before the start of the early voting period in the three major islands, we expect to hear more campaign promises from the candidates, all of whom will assure us that all we need to do to “solve” or “address” the problems bedeviling the CNMI is to elect them to office. We don’t think they’re lying. Most, if not almost all of them, believe their campaign pledges.
Meanwhile, a law that elected officials enacted in 1989 and “improved” in 2016 that is supposed to be implemented by eight government agencies remains largely unenforced. Yes, we’re talking about the anti-littering act.
Voters, whenever you hear yet another campaign promise, just remember: someone is violating the anti-littering law without a care.
If a government this big can’t even prevent illegal dumping in very public places, why do we expect it to “deliver” on its other more grandiose promises to “improve” the islands, if not our lives? All this government can do is collect revenue from the private sector, beg for federal funds, and spend money as if it came from the pockets of elected officials.
Still scraping
LAWMAKERS passed a construction tax, even though the Finance secretary admitted she wasn’t sure if it would actually generate additional revenue. As we’ve repeatedly pointed out before, the primary reason for tax-hike proposals is to justify the government’s unrealistic spending levels amid a bad economy.
Meanwhile, the hunt for local funding sources continues. It turns out that DPL has “reserved funds.” No more. Under the FY 2025 budget bill that is now with the governor, the $5.5 million allotted for DPL would instead go to MPLT — a possible source of yet another loan for the cash-strapped CNMI government.
And then there’s the Tinian divert airfield lease money totaling $21.9 million. CPA had authorized itself to spend $8 million of the amount to pay off a debt. We shouldn’t be surprised if, one of these days, the administration announces that it, too, is tapping into the divert airfield funds.
Two more years of scraping the bottom of the barrel.
