A very simple and entry-college-level lesson in government finance could have avoided a week of political bickering that came at the expense of the people of the Commonwealth. Instead, Senate president Edith Deleon Guerrero falsely propagated hope in the minds of 500 recently-laid off employees and their families, before a necessary correction deprived them of her reckless and deceitful assurance.
The legislature authorizes and limits the amount of money a governor can spend in a given time period, normally a fiscal year. A legislature places restrictions on how that budget can be used. The governor, working within those boundaries, then governs with the cash that comes into the coffers.
Legislators can’t dictate when that cash comes in, because aside from the personal taxes and fees they pay, they cannot possibly determine how much cash is paid into the Commonwealth treasury each day, each week, each month. And, so, the governance of cash flow, courts have maintained for quite some time, is the province of the executive.
And if the president of the CNMI Senate does not already understand this very fundamental separation of powers and, truly, rudimentary function of government finance, then there’s a real problem.
That problem manifested last week, when Ms. Deleon Guerrero falsely interpreted a budget report as a cash balance of federal pandemic funds. In her zeal to attack the administration, Ms. Deleon Guerrero recklessly and falsely reported to the public that more than $93 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds were sitting idly in the bank, available for legislative appropriation.
And the premise of her faux pronouncement was far more troubling: Her political backdrop was the hope of rehiring some 500 government employees. She essentially accused the Palacios administration of lying about, then hiding the existence of more than $93 million of cash that is not already obligated to some payment.
She made this accusation after reading two spreadsheets provided by the Department of Finance that provided preliminary budgetary reconciliations of ARPA accounts. Not cash balances. And without any critical context that explains the inflows and outflows of cash, the accounts that need to be paid, when they need to be paid, and what already has been overobligated by the previous administration.
She made an accusation as though it was a shot in the dark. Those counting on her to hit a target have been sorely misled, their hopes dashed by her irresponsible statements.
And rather than taking it back, and admitting she should accept the secretary of finance’s continuous invitation to participate in weekly public meetings about the government’s fiscal position, Ms. Deleon Guerrero appears to be digging in her heels with jargon that really makes no sense.
No leader is perfect. People will make mistakes. Leadership requires, among its precepts, that when you make a mistake, you own up to it, and correct it.
Let’s hope the Senate president walks back her damaging words, and commits to a more sincere effort to provide truthful information to the public, especially as the Commonwealth weathers its worst fiscal crisis.
2 Comments
Dame Edith Shitwell
07/01/2023 at 3:18 PM
Well! The ex-governor’s daughter finally gets her comeuppance for trading on MY good name, making reservations at Bong’s Bolis just by saying “hold a table for Dame Edith,” counting on the goodwill of strangers to assume she was I!
This isn’t the first nor even second time Dame Edith DLG has had a run-in with reality, is it? At CNMI Labor & Slavery, she was issuing immigration regulations right and left, seemingly as ignorant of the federalization news from 2009 as she is of how bank accounts work! But then, if you close your eyes and wish, maybe the CNMI will control immigration again, government coffers will be full again, and Edith will have gone to college.
It all reminds me of when I was a dashing young lady and only slightly postmenopausal: I stumbled upon Fulgencio Batista (not Kevin Bautista, though similar affinity for uniforms) playing dominoes in a quiet park just off of Calle Ocho. It had been a mere six years since his government had fallen, and his eyes still carried a sparkle of that infinite hope that one day, he might return to his past grandeur. Smoking a Montecristo and pouring himself a cafecito from a rusty thermos, he started to recount to me how he’d fled Havana — I stopped him right then and there and told him to SPEAK ENGLISH, BECAUSE THIS IS AMERICA!
Papalatung
07/03/2023 at 6:05 AM
Political infighting is the norm throughout our island chain and the crab mentality is prevalent within our society. It is sad to say that many of us are hesitant from returning to our islands to invest our hard-earned money. But at the end of the day, there are many countries throughout the world willing to welcome us to invest or spend our money within their jurisdictions. Political retaliation is well and alive within our society. Applying for our basic needs such as electricity (drop line hook up), had been a daunting task because of political influences. We are glad that the former governor (Ralp DLG. Torres) was not re-elected, because he was an expert in using his minions to retaliate against anyone who disagreed with him.