INDEMs Let Us Down; the Governor Needs to Escalate Meaningful Change

CNMI Governor Arnold Palacios’ mandate by the voters and his first two years in office remind me in many ways of the first two years of Felix Camacho’s governorship in Guam, except that Mr. Camacho, a Republican, did not have the benefit of a Republican legislative majority. In 2022, the voters gave Mr. Palacios, an independent aligned with the Democrats in his first two years, a majority in both houses of the CNMI legislature through a coalition of independents and Democrats known as the INDEMS.

What they stood for, and what propelled them to victory was a singular message: ‘We’re not Ralph Torres, we’re anti-corruption, and we have a plan to get us through the wreckage of the Torres era.’

It’s been two years, and the INDEMS have thus far failed. There is no other way of putting it.

What’s worse is that the CNMI Democratic Party which rose to prominence on its loud campaign against corruption has collectively become a silent agent of the status quo. So much for hope. It’s as though the party was only interested in getting its candidates elected, and then abandoned the struggle for righteousness once in power.

 

The Good Work

Like Mr. Camacho, Governor Palacios came to office with a budget deficit greater than annual local revenues and projected cash revenues substantially lower than operating costs. Both had the untenable job of stabilizing the government following gross mismanagement by the previous party in power and major destruction from natural disasters. Both struggled to make basic payroll and had to call for the rank and file and the community to sacrifice until it hurt, and then sacrifice some more.

Both managed to bring a semblance of calm and stabilization in their first two years in office, despite the sacrifices, the political opposition, and most importantly, the economic realities facing the everyday family.

Both prioritized and relied on the inflows of federal grants and influx of military spending to start off economic growth from their starting point of stagnation. Both managed to secure federal grants and leverage local funding to undertake major infrastructure improvements despite the economic decline.

The CNMI governor even fended off mounting pressure from the typical elite to increase Chinese Communist Party influence in Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.

The problem is that while both of them were doing the good, steady work to bring hope back into the public consciousness, both of their administrations engaged in conduct that sent the wrong message to people who were hoping that things would be different, undercutting confidence in an otherwise excellent agenda of governance and rebuilding.

 

Cash Crisis and Moral Call for Sacrifice Eclipsed by Business As Usual

So many of the distractions Governor Camacho faced as he dealt with the cash crisis and his message of sacrifice came from questions about his administration’s ill-advised decisions to hire some people who did not seem qualified for management positions, publicly paid travel that seemed excessive, pay raises to some as everyone else in the government suffered a 32-hour work week, and special favors for others while the entire island faced a 50 percent increase in the gross receipts tax. That tax increase passed on the premise of a collective sacrifice in order to save the government from insolvency. And while the questionable travel, hiring, pay raises, and special favors amounted to only negligible expenditures, it was the message that business as usual remained that had a debilitating and eroding effect on a good governor who was trying earnestly to do good things for the people.

I’m sure people in the CNMI see the parallels. Because the question that keeps coming to us from people in Saipan, Tinian, and Rota is: ‘What has changed?’

It’s very much true that the bogeyman of CNMI government – Ralph Torres – is no longer in power, and that Arnold Palacios is not the corrupt governor Mr. Torres was. That alone is remarkable, from our standpoint. But from the perspective of the everyday, suffering, struggling CNMI resident, the question ‘What’s next?’ is relevant and perplexing.

Austerity cutbacks in government work hours was a necessary and noble policy Mr. Palacios implemented to keep the ship of state afloat. But its nobility was cut down by the pay raises only a special few received, the hiring of people into positions for which they are not qualified and certainly were not the best and brightest. As the rank and file and their families endured lower pay, they had to have looked at the members of the cannabis commission and wondered what kind of work they were doing to merit a monthly $4,500 paycheck. Why are there even casino commissioners? There’s no casino!

Why is gambling still legal in the CNMI after the INDEMs marched to the polls on the promise of change predicated on their seeming disgust with how casino gambling ruined the CNMI economy?

Why are the utilities ratepayers forking out their money to pay the government’s debt to the Commonwealth Utilities Commission that was amassed during the Torres administration?

 

No Justice or Guardrails on Corruption Two Years Later

The corruption prosecutor – Jim Kingman – has needed certain tools in order to prosecute Mr. Torres and his gang, yet the INDEMs, having control of both houses of the legislature, failed to provide him those tools! What happened to Democrat-turned-independent Senator Corina Magofna and her long winded promises of battling corruption? How about Democrat-turned-whatever-party Senator Edith Deleon Guerrero.

What happened to the work independent Representative Ralph Yumul was supposed to do to investigate Mr. Torres’ corrupt use of federal pandemic funds? Was it all just some dog and pony show? What about the rest of the members of the House, which has been controlled by a supermajority of the INDEM coalition?

The Commonwealth Legislature’s INDEMs have a lot of explaining to do, and are a major reason the governor looks bad to so many people who counted on them and are now disappointed at the lack of action.

 

Missed Opportunities for Economic Growth

It is the lack of progress that is searing to so many. The governor is doing his part by courting federal grantors and the military to infuse cash into the Commonwealth. But both he and the legislature have missed the mark on economic policy that can be sustainable.

Every time we observe a member of the legislature or the administration applaud Marianas Visitors Authority, we wonder what planet they’re living on. You give kudos to people who do their jobs well. The benchmark for a job well done is surplus outcome. All MVA has done the past two years is spend a crapload of money, travel to exotic resort destinations on the public dime, and bitch about their fantasyland longing for a globally retracted, locally dead Chinese tourism economy. The outcome? Take a look at Garapan and tell me whether MVA deserves to be applauded.

The legislature – if they were actually committed to reform and to good governance – should have abolished MVA and appropriated marketing funds to actually qualified marketing firms in Korea and Japan to convince travelers to choose Saipan. The governor should have pushed for this. He could have even overseen the effort with a high-level staffer in his office using some of the funds that MVA instead pissed away in Langkawi and Australia.

Senator Donald Manglona had a bill that languished in the Senate that would have allowed the CNMI’s estimated-to-be thousands of undocumented residents to get driver’s licenses. Do you realize how much of a game changer that would be? Do you understand how that simple authorization can kickstart economic growth and increased government revenues, not to mention the safety factor? And why stop there? Imagine if the INDEMs who controlled the legislature the past two years, passed a statute that would allow the undocumented to get business licenses. All of the black market services these undocumented currently provide (even to members of the legislature) would then become legitimate and that income would be taxed.

Speaking of business licenses, the INDEMs have been too busy doing who knows what the past two years that they failed to reform the CNMI’s overly burdensome business license process. Zoning, anyone?

 

Taking Turns With Corruption

I was kidding when I wrote that the INDEMs were too busy doing who knows what. I know exactly what many of them were doing. They were traveling on your dime. The ridiculous amount of publicly paid trips members of the legislature took the past two years negates every argument these same leaders made against Ralph Torres’ global shopping sprees. How can you have the moral authority to bash the Republicans for their misconduct when you’re using public funds to take purposeless trips while the people are suffering without any money?

What ever happened to Senator Magofna’s promise of outcomes from her very expensive publicly paid trips to Manila and to the states? Nothing. It was just a vacation for her. And it wasn’t just her. Senator Donald Manglona and so many INDEM members of the House constantly traveled the past two years on the public dime.

The INDEMs also controlled the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation (SNILD) and the millions assigned to it. How much of that money was purposefully spent for the good of the Commonwealth and not in the grand tradition of cronyism?

And then there’s all the allowances the INDEMs took after they criticized the Republicans’ abuse of the monthly $5,000 unchecked stipends.

The INDEM coalition did not stand for change and reform the past two years. All they did was take their turn of power to do what the Republicans did before them: Screw the people to their benefit. And what makes it worse is that they did this during two of the darkest years in Commonwealth history.

 

The Silver Lining

The inability for the INDEM coalition to focus and to do what the public demanded of them two years ago will make it very easy for the incoming Republican Senate majority to prevail on voters with one singular, simple message: ‘First of all, we’re not Ralph Torres, and more importantly, we have an actual plan to get us out of this mess.’

After two years, it hardly matters to the everyday citizen how the CNMI got into this wreck as much it is urgent to institute solutions that rebuild economic prosperity on the ground level.

There is a silver-lined intersection in this parallelogram of Mr. Camacho and Mr. Palacios’ respective governorships. Felix Camacho inherited a broken government, much like Arnold Palacios did. Both were forced by unavoidable circumstances to do unpopular things, like cut government employees’ pay, raise taxes, and ask everyone to sacrifice until the government could stabilize and the economy could recover.

Felix Camacho ended up winning reelection against all odds. By his second term in office he had presided over tremendous economic growth, rehabilitation of tourism, unqualified clean financial audits, new ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars, 5,000 new affordable housing units, five brand new schools, and much more. There’s only one real reason, though, that he won reelection in 2006, when the island was still struggling to recover: Felix Camacho was a good man, and everyone knew it.

Arnold Palacios is a good man, and a good governor. He just has to shake off the influences of the business-as-usual remnants of politics, including his own friends in the legislature. He has no choice but to call out cronyism and corruption, especially when it is committed by members of his own coalition. The people are not stupid. If the INDEMs continue down this road, the people will know it was all a sham.