“This is not the right time to run for governor — no, actually, this is the worst time to run for governor,” a veteran politician told me as explained why he no longer wanted to be a gubernatorial candidate.
More businesses will shut down. Government revenues will continue to shrink. The next governor will have to make tough, painful choices compared to which the current administration’s proposed austerity measures will seem kindhearted.
His first year in office will be painful for everyone still on island.
He has to avoid payless paydays, save the Retirement Fund and continue providing crucial public services.
He has only one thing going for him: the rapidly decreasing CNMI population, which will help reduce the pressure on PSS, CHC, DPS, CUC and the court system.
His main task is to explain to the people that there is no going back to the good old days. The global economy is not expected to recover in a year. The local economy as we know it will be gone soon. With the federalization of local immigration, the CNMI’s ability to hire nonresident workers will be restricted. Attracting new investments, particularly those that involve labor-intensive operations, will be iffy. The small and medium-sized businesses that mushroomed during the boom days will run out of customers as more nonresidents and locals leave the islands.
To maintain key public services and pay the Retirement Fund, the CNMI government must implement massive spending cuts. Officials will be tempted to raise fees and taxes, which will finish off most of the remaining businesses on island and further reduce government revenues.
Eventually, the governor will have no choice but to cut salaries and benefits. He and the Legislature must conduct a desk audit that will cover all offices in all three branches of the government, including the autonomous agencies, the offices of the mayors and the municipal councils. The goal is to determine which offices are really needed, which can be consolidated or eliminated, and what functions can be done better by the private sector.
The next governor has to do all this in his first six months in office.
Or, he could try to do what the other governors did — make promises he know he cannot deliver; try to please everyone; hope that CIPs will do the trick; raise fees, again; seek more federal dole-outs, again; hire nonessential employees and worry about their salaries later; stiff the Retirement Fund, CUC and government vendors; make more promises; and blame your predecessor.
This is the equivalent of using scotch tape to plug a boat leak.
The CNMI needs a new leader with a new vision. Voters should realize that old solutions cannot solve new problems. The problem is that the same old promises win votes, and candor in politics is considered suicidal. Indeed, why should you vote for someone who promises to abolish nonessential jobs and reduce government spending so that everyone can continue to get adequate healthcare, law and order, a reliable education system and a retirement system that is not broke?
Voters, however, will have no one to blame but themselves if they continue to believe politicians who promise the moon.
Those who have had enough should challenge candidates who are always for education, public health, environment, scholarships, more investments, motherhood and pugua for everyone.
Ask them: How can you get the funding for all your promises — in this economy? Will you raise taxes? Will you reduce benefits and salaries? Call for the abolition of nonessential agencies? (In my estimate, 80 percent of these offices can be scrapped without affecting the delivery of key public services.) If he says no, then he’s lying. He won’t be able to deliver his promises.
The CNMI, to quote President Obama, has “lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. …And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day. Well, that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.”
The alternative is to continue living in the past and electing the same old politicians whose policies created the mess they now say they will clean up.
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