San Agustin cautions against spending excess revenue

The government's fiscal year ends this month, and finance chairman Sen. Joe San Agustin is confident there will be enough money to cover all the miscellaneous appropriations.

Senators tacked on a flurry of extra spending provisions to the budget bill passed last month and signed with reservations by the governor.

Meanwhile, the budget bureau has released the "Consolidated Revenue and Expenditure Report" for August which shows a balance in excess revenues of $19 million. But that figure has not yet been audited, so there's no guarantee there will actually be that much available.

"What we need to do is to avoid trying to tap it and use it up before the audit," San Agustin said. "Because you know during the budget we pretty much appropriated everything, and it's a good sign when there's more revenue coming in. Let's hope next month's revenue, the CRER report comes out the same."

At one point earlier this year, projected excess revenues totaled almost $100 million, but all of it was eventually whittled away by a wide variety of new spending measures by senators. But we asked, what happens if the audited figure comes up short?

KUAM News: Say the 19 is not correct, there's actually less than that, so which appropriations will not get funded?

San Agustin: Well, we can't identify which one won't get funded but that will be on the administration's part. That's their role. If they find certain things, I'll give you a good example, if something was appropriated 10 million and we only had 9 then she has to look for what else she can support and process."

San Agustin the books probably won't be closed out until at least the end of the year, and he's urging colleagues not to appropriate any more money against projected fiscal year '23 excess revenues.

In other news, the next legislative session is scheduled for tomorrow.