Below is the transcription of Ms. Sablan’s statements before the CNMI House Judiciary and Governmental Operations Committee on December 14, 2021 immediately before the vote to hold the governor in contempt:
Madame Chair and Colleagues:
If the Governor had come in to testify under oath, we would have asked him to explain his actions.
We would have asked him to explain his spending of public funds.
We would have asked him to address what appears to be a pattern of wasteful and extravagant abuse of government resources.
We would have asked him about his first-class and business-class travel. Why he continued to fly premium-class despite the law that prohibits that, and despite the advice – the warnings – from Finance and the Lt. Governor that he needed to stop.
Why he thought it was okay to request and authorize first-class and business-class travel for his spouse, who is not a government employee, to accompany him.
We would have asked him to explain why he and his wife flew approximately 16 times at taxpayer expense in the fiscal year after Supertyphoon Yutu. How he barely stayed on island in the weeks and months after our islands were completely destroyed.
And how, during this same period, while most people were suffering here, without adequate shelter, power, or water, he was traveling, dining and shopping extravagantly at taxpayer expense.
We would have asked him to explain trips that appear to have been personal or political in nature – with the very thinnest of justifications. A supposed meeting off-island with unnamed “potential business partners” that looks like it was really a campaign stop. A supposed meeting off-island with federal officials, that looks like it was really about going to a softball game.
Altogether, Chair and Colleagues, since becoming Governor, Ralph Torres has taken over 100 trips by plane, and cost the government nearly half a million dollars for himself alone, not including the travel expenses of all the people who accompanied him.
He has also gone out on at least 85 trips by boat – either on police search and rescue boats or accompanied by DPS boats and police officers. Many of these outings appear to be fishing trips, but there were also trips to Managaha and the Northern Islands, and cruises at sunset and midnight.
Taxpayers paid for the fuel – thousands of gallons. Taxpayers also paid for the entourage of police officers who accompanied him each time.
The boating trip that really takes the cake was the Governor’s three-week expedition to the Northern Islands that we all paid for, last summer, in the middle of the pandemic. He had DPS
search and rescue boats, utility vehicles, and police officers go with him. He had DLNR send a boat and staff. He had generators from Homeland Security. He had MVA charter the boats and pay for meals, apparently, for everybody – and MVA only found out later that these expenses were coming out of their budget, not the governor’s office. The government paid for all that fuel.
Deer were released into the wild illegally, the beach was set on fire, fuel was stored on bare ground without containment, and poaching in protected places appears to have occurred. And he called it an “ecotourism” promotion. There was nothing “eco” about it. And not a single tourist came as a result.
What we did see was plenty of video footage of Governor Torres on vacation with family and friends, fishing, eating, and enjoying our beautiful Northern Islands at taxpayer expense.
With all these travels by air and by sea, when did the governor ever find time to govern?
We would have asked him how many credit cards he has, and to account for the 26 cards found among the hundreds of receipts he submitted to Finance. We would have asked him why cards that appear to belong to other people are among his requests for reimbursement.
We would have asked him how he could justify reimbursing himself for thousands of dollars for things like rifle cases and camping gear. Expensive scotch that he may or may not have brought to a private party. A car battery for his personal van. A family’s birthday lunch that he wasn’t even part of, and that he claimed as a “meeting.”
We would have asked him to account for all the electronics, all the hardware and yard equipment like wheelbarrows and chainsaws, the coolers and sporting goods that he claimed for reimbursement as office expenses. These were things that never actually made it back to the office – according to the testimonies we heard and the office inventory sheets we reviewed, page by page, painstakingly with the Special Assistant for Administration.
We would have asked him to explain why he chose to reimburse himself for thousands of dollars in utility expenses at his private residence, rather than go through the established process that the Lt. Governor and their predecessors have used, and that is, to simply hand the billings over to the Special Assistant for Administration, to process for payment by Finance.
He claims in a recorded interview to have borrowed $6,700 from loved ones in cash to pay CUC on one particular occasion. Who were these loved ones, and has he accepted gifts like that from them before?
Governor Torres got reimbursed for that the very next day – which is unusually fast for Finance, as most people who deal with the government would know. But if the Governor could get Finance to cut him a check so quickly – why didn’t he just get Finance to pay CUC directly in the first place?
What also doesn’t make sense are the other tens of thousands of dollars that taxpayers have paid in utilities at the Governor’s private estate – hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in a month, thousands of dollars in electricity, multiple meters, including meters that fed the commercial piggery on his property.
When this body tried to prohibit in the budget act this benefit that Finance keeps paying out without any legal basis whatsoever, the governor vetoed it.
Even after all these outrageous abuses came to light, the excessiveness of his water and power usage – Governor Torres still sees this benefit as his entitlement. So many people struggle month to month to pay their CUC bills and avoid disconnection. And we continue to pay the Governor’s CUC bills too.
We would have asked him to explain and account for all these things, and many more. He has said time and again all we had to do was talk to him, and ask him directly. But when push came to shove, he has refused to appear and answer questions under oath. He has invoked immunity and privilege for himself, his staff, and his DPS Commissioner, without legal merit. He has allowed his secretary to be held in contempt.
So much for having nothing to hide.
Madame Chair and Colleagues: let’s review the record with respect to the subpoena that was issued to Governor Torres.
We subpoenaed Governor Torres to appear on Friday, December 10, 2021 at 10:30am, pursuant to our investigatory powers under the law at Title 1 Section 1301, to subpoena witnesses.
He failed to appear.
We offered to take the subpoena away and have him appear voluntarily later that same day, Friday to testify under oath, pursuant to our powers under Title 1 Section 1309, to obtain evidence or information under other lawful means.
He failed to appear.
We commend and appreciate all the other witnesses who received subpoenas and had the courage to appear before this body. All of them followed the law. All of them followed the Constitution. Even Ms. Frances Dela Cruz appeared. We held her in contempt for refusing to answer questions, but she, at least appeared.
Governor Torres has failed to do even that.
We even gave him one more chance – the opportunity to purge himself of contempt by appearing voluntarily and testifying under oath today, Tuesday, at 10:30am.
He has not done so.
Madame Chair and Colleagues, we have made every effort to engage in a process of negotiation and accommodation to get the information required for our factfinding investigation, without a legal battle between the branches.
In discussions with the Governor’s counsel, we proposed the option to appear voluntarily under conditions of mutual agreement to testify under oath. But the Governor’s only reply was the unserious and insulting suggestion to speak, without any oath to ensure the truthfulness of his answers, with only one member of this Committee. That would leave us with no quorum to even constitute Committee action.
At this point, Madame Chair and colleagues, Governor Torres’s reckless failure to comply has left us with no choice. And we do not take lightly our action today to enforce our lawful subpoena and hold him accountable for violating it.
I therefore move to vote to hold Governor Torres in contempt for failing to appear or provide any testimony at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, December 10, in reckless disregard of our lawful subpoena.
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1 Comments
Frank Agulto
12/16/2021 at 2:54 PM
This is “one side” of the un-news which this “governor” thinks he is rightly wrong. I am a voter of Precinct 5. God Bless for Jesus is Lord and “Salvation”.