by Mindy Aguon

Guam - Government collections are down, and with a payday tomorrow, the Department of Administration is hopeful enough money will be generated to prevent a payless payday.

"The cash flow is pretty tight right now, to be honest," said John Camacho.

With money slowly trickling into government coffers coupled with $6.1 million needed for the Department of Education, meeting tomorrow's GovGuam payroll is proving to be quite a challenge. Camacho, the Department of Administration's acting director, is optimistic there won't be any payless paydays - but he admits it'll be a close call. "We're all behind in their allotment payment. As the money is coming in tomorrow it would be our priority is DOE to give them their $6.1 million by tomorrow, then everybody else would follow - GMH, the court, and down the line," he explained.

While the focus is to give DOE funding to cover payroll and to stave-off layoffs of federally-funded employees, autonomous agencies are left with whatever cash remains to cover their own payroll. "Whatever we can pay tomorrow just to cover payroll and if possible the remainder will come on Monday or Tuesday, said Camacho.

At the Guam Memorial Hospital, Spokesperson Connor Murphy says there's a concerted effort to obtain $1.6 million just to cover payroll. He told KUAM News, "We're working with DOA to get as much of our allotment as we can get from them, and also the hospital is a little unique because most of our revenue comes in from payments generated for services. So we're making sure we bill as fast as we can with insurance companies and make sure also getting them to process the payments as quickly as we can."

It's a similar situation for the University of Guam and Guam Community College and the Judiciary that are all behind in receiving allotments. The court has only received 60% of its scheduled allotment resulting in $4 million less than was scheduled. Court Administrator Perry Taitano says while the Judiciary will barely make payroll tomorrow, future pay periods are questionable.

The cash crunch has prompted the court to revert to manual check processing, which means employees will no longer have direct deposit and must pay for loans and other payroll deducted items themselves.

With real property and GRT due on Saturday, DOA is hopeful enough money will come in by next week to get the governments finances back on track.