By Mabel Doge Luhan
On June 22, which seems like The Before Times in constitutional law terms, Kandit emailed MVA asking for staffing and salary and benefits information of its CNMI and overseas offices. Since they have four full-time accountants and two full-time statisticians, you’d think this would be an easy request for them to answer — and whether easy or not, it’s legally required.
It took MVA only two weeks to respond to us, with a limp reply of a one-sheet PDF. It has the base salaries of (presumably) everyone in their CNMI offices. It does not include the costs of their benefits and perks. It also does not include anything about their overseas offices! How much are we paying for our Korea and Japan (and perhaps other) overseas offices? Whose achakmas work there? What benefits do they receive? How much are we paying rent, and whose cousin is the landlord? In violation of the Open Government Act, the MVA didn’t answer. I hope we don’t have to call in JESSICA FLETCHER or JIM KINGMAN!
Why, I’m sure MVA was just busy welcoming all the Australian and Malaysian tourists they’ve brought us. Or maybe standing in front of the Hyatt and telling passers-by that it’s not really closed. In any case, MVA is not in compliance with the requirements of the CNMI’s Open Government Act in withholding salary and staffing information about their overseas offices. I recommend you readers, my dear ferrets, email MVA yourselves. Chris’s email address is cconcepcion at the domain name mymarianas.com (even MVA doesn’t deserve to be spammed!). You are paying for that email address, so you damn well are entitled to send email there and request information under the Open Government Act. You may also want to ask Chris, under the Open Government Act, how much was paid and is being paid to club drug test lab — I mean advertising agency — UltraSuperNew. He’s obligated to tell you!
UltraSuperNew has been working hard on our behalf. Check out their Instagram marketing:
https://www.instagram.com/
Why, some of these brilliant, innovative posts, such as two people standing by an air conditioner, have been viewed over a hundred times! We’re certainly getting our money’s worth!
And look at this excellent website — it’s been updated as recently as January of this very year!
I am looking forward to finding out how much they are paying UltraSuperNew for all this work. But the information MVA did send so far is quite a doozy in itself.
Apparently we the people of the CNMI are paying George Sablan $45,000 a year (plus insurance, benefits, and a phone and a car and whatever else he gets) to certify tour guides. Meaning that someone thinks it’s worth well over $45,000 per year to the Commonwealth to make sure that we don’t have any tour guides that aren’t certified by MVA — because our destination is just destroyed by too many tour guides! Imagine what $45,000 a year could do for our uninsured cancer patients, or families who don’t have enough to eat but don’t qualify for food stamps, or schools that can’t afford to buy crayons and paper. Well, none of that could possibly be more important than paying George Sablan to “certify tour guides,” could it?
Perhaps most stunning — other than four full-time accountants — is that MVA employs two full-time statisticians. Is MVA running a baseball betting operation? An economic forecasting consultancy? A quantitative hedge fund? Nope! Just a visitors’ authority for a tiny Pacific commonwealth. Maybe those two full-time statisticians are needed to keep track of everyone’s airline miles and hotel points? And the accountants for tracking the per-diems? The mind boggles!
In the June 24th Marianas Variety, Emmanuel Erediano heard this spectacularly false statement from Chris Concepcion and didn’t ask any questions about it:
“But he said their $12.3 million budget request is ‘very low’ compared to competitors like the Guam Visitors Bureau, which is requesting the Guam Legislature $35 million for FY 2025.”
First, whatever Guam does is no model of good governance or fiscal efficiency. Second, the Guam Visitors Bureau gets an automatic, pre-programmed cut of hotel tax collections, and $35 million is those hotel tax collections. Third, Guam has a GDP about seven times our size — so as a fraction of GDP, MVA should actually be getting $5 million to be like Guam. Ask your four accountants and two statisticians to explain that to you Chris!
And fourth, are you out of your freaking mind, or just utterly taimamalao? Demanding $12.3 million from a desperately broke local government, and telling us that it’s very low? How stupid do you think we are? Some of us have more worldly experience than tagging bags, printing boarding passes, and vacationing in Langkawi — and we’re going to call you out on your malarkey every step of the way.
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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.
1 Comments
MVA is a joke
07/10/2024 at 9:26 AM
You’re right.. How these folks in MVA requesting to match Guam’s budget is a joke. Where the hell did these folks get their education and what the hell does Saipan have to offer that Guam doesn’t? These people in charge are so crooked and small minded. So many opportunities that can reshape the island, yet they are blinded by their stupidity.