After heated debate, salary reduction bill withdrawn

by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - It was yesterday when Senator Michael Limtiaco's Bill 30 was debated on session floor that aimed at reducing senatorial salaries to $55,307 a year. "So it's disheartening that we're going through the process and we have the ability to make the laws better yet we continuously add amendments on the floor to the bill that take out the gist of the bill," he said.

That amendment was introduced by Senator Michael San Nicolas, which instead of mandating a cut, would make it voluntary. San Nicolas says he's disappointed the bill was withdrawn, noting, "I found it to be very peculiar because my amendments would have allowed them to cut a 100 percent of their salaries and would have allowed the cuts to be voluntary so if they wanted to take a full pay cut they could."

Ultimately, he says, if it was a real sincere effort to save our government money, they should have seen it all the way through to allow for the voluntary provisions to take effect. "This constantly comes up and from my perspective is it looks very political to me, so if you really believe in taking salary cuts, I really wanted it be voluntary, take your cuts, go ahead and send out your press releases if you wanted to but let's move on and let's focus on the people's business," he said.

Limtiaco however says voluntary pay cuts can already be done without legislation of which he notes his office is already doing. his biggest concern was the other amendment also proffered by Senator San Nicolas that deleted the provision delinking senator's salaries to that of superior court judges salaries. Limtiaco says the amendment puts back a way of covertly getting a pay increase. "And it's just going to happen, and as the law sits now we can basically say well the judiciary counsel raised the superior court judge's pay so therefore we're just following the law, so we're just getting a raise too, and to do that to the constituents to pull the sheets over their eyes is wrong," he said.

Limtiaco says he's inquiring with the chief justice on whether superior court judges are due for any increments. He says in the last several years, judges received four percent raises. Ultimately, Limtiaco says cutting senator salaries is nothing new and says potentially we could see another iteration of this bill.