by Mindy Aguon

Guam - While the Fiscal Year 2013 budget bill is under review at Adelup, there's growing debate among the very lawmakers who unanimously passed the measure. Republican senators say the bill doesn't address the need to save for 2013 tax refunds.

So is there really a $100 million gap in the Fiscal Year 2013 budget? Apparently, it depends on who you ask. Speaker Judi Won Pat said, "I think the $100 million gap that they're talking about is one for those who haven't even earned their wages. And have not even filed for that. So that's 2013 and we're right now just paying out the 2011."

Minority Leader Frank Blas, Jr. said, "With the regards to the $100 million shortfall, what each budget has done is try to set aside. We're playing catch up with this thing and what we want to do is while we're playing catch up we also want to put those measures in to ensure that in 2014 we're no longer playing catch up with the monies there."

Republican senators late Wednesday penned a letter to the acting governor and to their colleague, Finance Committee chair Senator Ben Pangelinan expressing concern that the Fiscal Year 2013 budget falls short of setting aside the necessary funding to pay 2013 tax returns. The budget bill instead provides funding to pay the remainder of tax year 2011 refunds and 2012 refunds first.

Speaker Won Pat says those obligations come first, saying, "Why are we gonna put in something for 2013 that's not going to happen until a couple of years down the line so it's gonna have to be the first is '11 and then '12 and that's how we've always been doing it."

Blas says he and his republican colleagues voted in favor of the budget bill, despite the shortfall, because they knew that discussion on ways to identify the $100 million would be included during debate over the spending cuts proposed in the Governor Eddie Calvo's Omnibus Fiscal Reform Act of 2012. "What we've proposed to do is start to look at the governor's plan to be able and what he proposes how we manage to get the $100 million necessary to pay the tax returns in 2014 and look at ways we can enhance our revenue steams," he said.

It's a discussion the Calvo Administration hopes happens sooner rather than later. Acting Governor Ray Tenorio stated, "We're at a day of reckoning where the cash crisis has finally caught up with the budget process, just as a federal court prepares an order compelling GovGuam to do what Governor Calvo has been trying to do since January last year."

Won Pat added, "We need the data and the data will drive the policy. Depending on the numbers that are coming back to us and to all the members they would be able to look at that and discern to see where the needs, where we need to cut and then at the same time what I think is really very important here, is that we really need to look at generating new revenues."

And with the recent decision of the District Court ordering a permanent injunction for the timely and equitable payment of tax refunds each year, Republicans say the time to act is now. "What we want to do is start to be proactive about this so that come 2014 there is that money that is set aside to pay for the tax returns that are owed from 2013," said Blas.

Senator Pangelinan did not respond to Republican senators concerns about the $100 million. He did issue a press release though, saying he is confident the governor will sign the budget bill into law saying the revenue estimates are essentially the same as the governor's with the exception of an increased projection in the Tourist Attraction Fund, which came after receiving updated figures from the Guam Visitors Bureau.