To the rescue!
ACCORDING to the Office of Personnel Management’s desk audit, the Department of Corrections needs more personnel. Corrections, which has about 90 officers, plans to hire 39 cadets once they graduate from the Corrections Academy in October, but the department’s commissioner said they need more.
The CNMI Medicaid agency says it also needs more personnel “to address the influx” of Medicaid applicants due to Presumptive Eligibility, “a Medicaid option designed to improve an applicant’s access to temporary Medicaid while their eligibility for full Medicaid benefits is being determined.”
What do these agencies need to hire more staff? Additional funding, of course. But not to worry. House members who like to remind us that they “hold” the government’s “purse” can and should introduce the necessary appropriation measures, right? What’s the funding source, you ask?
Well, over two years ago, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic’s disastrous impact on the CNMI economy and the government’s financial condition, the Commonwealth held a Fiscal Summit with “technical support provided by the Graduate School USA team,” and “funding support from the Department of the Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs.” Check it out: https://cnmi.pitiviti.org/
The briefing paper prepared by the Fiscal Response Task Force mentioned several measures that could reduce the government’s “non-essential” spending to “free” additional funding for Corrections and the CNMI Medicaid Agency. Based on the briefing paper, these would include work-hour cuts, reduction in non-essential personnel, reduction of non-essential jobs, the cancelation or postponement of additional 25% pension payments, and reduction in medical referral costs. “Concerned” lawmakers could also consider “revenue enhancements”: that is, business and income tax hikes.
Of course, introducing any of these “cost-cutting” and “revenue-generating” proposals would more than likely end many political careers less than three months before the general election.
To be sure, there is a “cost-cutting” House bill that would reduce the compensation of the Commonwealth casino commissioners — even though they do not receive funding from the CNMI government. (Except for a $1 — yes, a dollar — annual appropriation which could be raised to the princely sum of $1,000.) Unlike other government entities, essential or not, the casino commission is considered as unpopular as IPI, and therefore an easy target for politicians.
How does that solve the lack of personnel at Corrections and the CNMI Medicaid Agency?
It won’t. But politicians railing at the unpopular is supposed to make them more popular in an election year, and they are probably right.
Highly competitive
THE world’s most popular destinations are in Europe (France and Spain are the top two.) Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported on how European destinations are “courting” affluent remote workers from abroad through longer-term visas, tax breaks and other perks. The Journal noted that the number of Americans “who identify as digital nomads — meaning those who combine remote work with travel — more than doubled to 15 million in 2021 from seven million in 2019….”
An American who runs a marketing company on California has availed herself of Malta’s visa program, and said she plans to stay there for the rest of the year. But she may not renew her visa for 2023. “There are just so any other choices available,” she told the Journal. “Maybe Portugal next?”
Now and then we have to remind ourselves that the NMI is just one of the many — so many — attractive tourist destinations around the world. And never mind Europe. There’s Guam, Fiji, Tahiti, among other stunning islands in the Pacific.
Hence, what a Guam tourism official said recently applies, too, to NMI tourism: “Our industry is fragile and we need all the support we can get for our airlines, travel agents, and small businesses that all contribute to our island’s tourism economy.”
