MSN says Jim Moylan is not being honest about compact impact funding

Michael San Nicolas, in a public post, said Jim Moylan – the man who took over his job as Guam’s delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives – is lying to Guamanians about Mr. Moylan’s failure to secure funding from Congress for the local impact of the Compacts of Free Association.

Earlier this year, Guam and its governor were blindsided by news that Mr. Moylan’s office had failed to secure annual compact impact funding, customarily amounting to $15 million. GovGuam uses those funds to pay municipal leases for schools built during the Camacho administration, and for other education, health, and safety expenses that offset the cost of services used by immigrants from the freely associated states of Micronesia.

The annual funding is purely a function of Congress, as it is a provision of federal funds. Mr. Moylan, however, in order to deflect from his responsibility as Guam’s lone representative to Congress, has been associating the annual Congressional funding with the once-every-20-years renewal of the Compacts of Free Association itself. Those COFA renewal negotiations are between the U.S. executive branch and the foreign ministries of the countries that partake in the COFA.

The freshman republican congressman has previously assured Guamanians his influence among powerful republican friends who control the House, and his position on the House Natural Resources Committee would be meaningful in securing the compact impacts funds. However, in a post to Facebook Monday, Mr. Moylan, who is traveling throughout the region with a congressional delegation of the natural resources committee, began to backpedal.

Writing that the congressional delegation, or CODEL, has oversight of the COFA renewals, he said, “These negotiations started in 2022, and unfortunately since Guam did not play an aggressive role in the process, as the 20 year agreement ends on September 30, 2023, so do the annual reimbursements for Guam.”

“That is completely untrue,” Mr. San Nicolas said.

“Compact Impact IS NOT FUNDED by these compact agreements,” the former congressman continued. “It is funded separately and entirely by Appropriations from Congress. Sure their names sound similar, but they are completely separate things.”

This will be the first time in 20 years a congressman from Guam has failed to secure compact impact funds for the island.

Kandit reached out to Mr. Moylan directly for his response to San Nicolas. Moylan did not respond to our request for comment.

You may read Mr. San Nicolas’ full public statement below:

His recent post claims Guam is losing Compact Impact funding because “Guam did not play an aggressive role in the process” of renewing the compact agreements.

That is completely untrue.

Compact Impact IS NOT FUNDED by these compact agreements. It is funded separately and entirely by Appropriations from Congress. Sure their names sound similar, but they are completely separate things.

As a case in point, one of the three compact agreements were recently renewed a few years ago and Guam was STILL GETTING Compact Impact funding because we were doing our job and making sure the funding came in from Congressional Appropriations. It has nothing to do with compact agreements.

It’s clear Moylan is being untruthful about this now because HE is going to be responsible for losing Guam $15 million it has gotten every year for over 20 years now and he does not want to take responsibility for it, nor does he have the ability or competence to protect it for Guam.

In fact just a few months ago he was claiming this CODEL was going to remedy it and now its clear he is not only backpedaling on that, but willing to be entirely untruthful about the matter.

Its so unfortunate that when we were in office the media would hound us and disbelieve what we were achieving and yet we would deliver over and over and hold press conferences to prove it, and now Moylan just puts out complete falsehoods and he is allowed to just mislead, lose Guam money, let Guam down, and skate.

Really REALLY disappointed with how he turned out. It’s like all the politicians just pretend to fight for the people, and once they get in office they don’t care at all and will say or do anything to stay elected.