CNMI House Special Committee continues COVID expense review

The CNMI House Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster-Related Funding scheduled oversight hearings for six agencies regarding hundreds of documents on spending for the COVID-19 emergency.

Oversight hearings starting on July 20 now in the books. The CNMI House Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster-Related Funding continues their review of COVID-19 spending.

"The big-ticket items right now is obviously the payro

 

ll. We need to clarify that clearly. The new contracts that were signed by each exempted employee, cabinet members.  Those need to be clarified because these employees now timing in, are they on the clock all day long. I mean, who is monitoring the amount? So that is our main concern," said representative Ralph Yumul.

They expect to call members of six agencies, including the Dept. of Finance, to follow the money. The committee requests for more information on the FEMA reimbursement packet, contracts signed from Guam, and regular payroll records matching COVID pay periods.

Representative Tina Sablan said, "The Secretary of Finance [David Atalig] very clearly stated that cabinet members were not getting paid overtime and that they were only getting paid basically having their salaries restored to the 80 hours. So only up to 16 hours straight time that they were getting paid for their COVID-related work out of the CARES Act funding, right. But that really does not seem to be the case with most of the cabinet members who received some sort of COVID pay well in excess of the 16 hours."

As questions are asked under oath, Rep. Joseph "Lee Pan" Guerrero says he doesn't want to waste any time. He said, "We don't to end up just having an all-day session and out of 20 or 30 questions only one is answered."