Two amendments were made to bipartisan Bill 99 during the latest legislative session.

The bill was introduced by Vice Speaker Tina Muna Barnes. The measure would create a revolving fund for Department of Corrections inmates called the "Inafa'maolek for Inmates Fund" to ultimately allow indigent clients to have access to adequate legal representation. During the pandemic, visitation privileges were paused and co

mmunication was only permitted through the Paytel system.

One of the amendments was to change the name to "the inmate phone access." The second amendment, "is to put the word indigent in several different places in front of inmates and detainees and this is just to make sure that those that qualify are those in the indigent population at DOC," Barnes said.

Senators had an opportunity to ask questions to a panel, which included the department of corrections regarding the matter.

"With this bill I think it would work perfectly with that anyone that calls the alternate public defender, or the public defender or their court-appointed attorney, those numbers, we will work with those agencies and identify which will be free basically and the bill would come back to DOC and use revenue from the probate to pay for it," DOC Spokesperson Major Antone Aguon said.

According to Aguon, the current cost for calls is 15 cents per minute.