Guam - Bureau of Budget & Management Research director John Rios has responded to Senator Ben Pangelinan's letter over the certification letter for payment of merit bonuses. Rios say the mandated certification is for expenditures and payments from current year appropriations and that the merit bonuses were prior year liabilities not charged to current year appropriations.

"In this case here, to my knowledge, that the funds that are used are not from this appropriation 0917 I've never signed any release of allotments to pay for the merit bonuses 0924 so there's no requirement to certify the fund," he said.

Department of Administration director Benita Manglona adds the authority to pay for prior year obligations such as merit bonuses came from Public Law 31-77 which is the prior fiscal year and from excess revenue in 2012. It was last month when $4.5 million in merit bonuses were paid out to GovGuam employees.