The nerve
LAWMAKERS opposed to the governor “investigated” his public expenditures, which the same lawmakers believe are excessive. Result? His office spends public funds on attorneys. And that’s even before the governor’s impeachment trial in the Senate.
The House JGO went full “investigative” mode with subpoenas that demanded sworn testimonies and included sternly worded reminders about The Law and Possible Criminal Penalties, among other legalese that a government employee or an appointed official might find intimidating. So they “lawyered up.” (Why would the lt. governor need a lawyer to speak against a potential election opponent? Less than a month before his JGO testimony, the lt. governor had announced that he was thinking about running for governor.)
There were, to be sure, other ways to obtain the JGO’s “findings,” most of which were already mentioned in a report available online and reported by the local media. In 2013, the newly elected House majority didn’t need to conduct lengthy oversight hearings or to summon or subpoena witnesses. They simply re-introduced and adopted an impeachment resolution they couldn’t pass when they were still the minority in the previous House.
The current JGO, moreover, could have simply done what former Public Auditor Leo LaMotte and his OPA crew became well known for back in the day. OPA would, without fanfare, conduct an investigation, review documents, interview government officials and/or personnel, come up with OPA’s “raw” findings, solicit the comments of the relevant officials, finalize a report, provide copies to the media and, if warranted, refer the findings to the AG’s office for possible prosecution. (The AG’s office, however, was still under the governor’s office.)
No drama. And OPA did not cause the expenditure of more public funds to prevent the waste of public funds.
But then again, who wants to read multi-paged official reports nowadays when anyone can “live stream”?
Perhaps the governor’s political opponents didn’t anticipate that their righteous crusade against unnecessary government spending would result in more unnecessary government spending. Or maybe they did, but then they also figured they could just blame the governor for invoking due process.
Hear, hear
BUT no. The forthcoming Senate impeachment trial is not preventing legislators from “getting back” to their “main legislative business of facing our colossal financial challenges of the CNMI.”
And those “colossal financial challenges,” in any case, are the direct result of the generous government programs (see, for example, the NMI Retirement Fund) that politicians in the executive and legislative branches of government eagerly created and readily expanded through all these years — on top of the offices and agencies they continue to create one after the other, regardless of overlapping duties and functions as long as they could be staffed by registered voters related to other registered voters.
As a local political group once pointed out, “There is a need for imagination, for bold new approaches to government and development. The ones we know no longer work and will lead us to bankruptcy. We must move away from the MORE GOVERNMENT to the LESS GOVERNMENT philosophy, from GOVERNMENT AS THE EMPLOYER OF FIRST RESORT to GOVERNMENT AS EMPLOYER OF LAST RESORT thinking.”
Who said that?
The NMI Democratic Party, 39 years ago.
