HEADS should roll among members of various boards of directors, boards of trustees, commissions and other policy-making bodies due to their inefficiency, abuse of public funds and lack of qualifications.
There are board members and commissioners who are the first ones to route their travel papers, instead of sending directors, managers and employees to the U.S. or any off-island conferences to hone their skills and expertise.
Workshops, training and conferences should be attended mostly by those whose work would be directly improved—and not the board members or commissioners who don’t even bother to share what they have learned from their travels.
Some even take a year to finally do a report about their travel.
One of the few agencies to implement improved travel policies is the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. Currently, middle level management personnel are the ones mostly sent to off-island training, contrary to previous practice when board members seemed to be the “priority.”
For example, power crew and managers should be the ones sent to a conference on power issues, and not CUC board members who are not actually the ones rushing down the street to fix our power supply.
In Nov. 2001, the Office of the Public Auditor issued a report stating that utilities officials incurred $87,800 in off-island travel overpayments by using business and first class airline tickets.
CUC board members will not pay back the overpayments. However, they adopted a travel policy that specifically requires all utilities board members and employees to use economy or coach class airline tickets in their travels to comply with the law and with OPA’s recommendations.
CUC also postponed its scheduled election of officers the other week due to lack of quorum. As far as I remember, this is the first time that only three members showed up on a regular board meeting. Was it just a coincidence or planned to delay the elections?
In Aug. 2001, OPA’s audit report also showed that at least 21 trustees, officials and employees of the Retirement Fund were overpaid by about $42,776 for their overseas travels.
OPA said that while they failed to strictly comply with the agency’s travel policy from Oct. 1996 to March 2000, they were not reprimanded.
The Board of Education and Education Commissioner Rita H. Inos had their share of criticisms last year for conflicts of interest due to political ties. Is this going to happen again in the next elections?
The board members of the Commonwealth Development Authority and the Marianas Public Lands Authority are also in hot water due to allegations of conflict of interest involving public funds deposited in non-FDIC banks.
I have also been attending the Commonwealth Telecommunications Commission meetings since January this year. I’ve observed that the five-member commission has never been complete. The maximum number of commissioners you can have is four. Sometimes three. Sometimes two.
And because they didn’t have a quorum, there was no formal meeting at all, but just plain discussions with Verizon officials, Rep. Joe Guerrero and other members of the public.
So I asked, is there a chance for the commission members to be all present in one room?
There’s actually no chance because even from the start, one of the five commissioners already shown his “disinterest” in being part of the policy-making body.
Thus, the commission recently requested Gov. Juan N. Babauta to appoint a new commissioner to replace Victor B. Hocog.
His replacement is very critical, especially because the commission is set to decide on the fate of the proposed $6 million sale of Verizon to Pacific Telecom.
