The governor's office announced today that the first series of purchase orders for school repairs are out, but also warned that if the legislature forces it to return previously appropriated funds to the Guam Department of Education, the progress could come to a screeching halt.

It all involves some $20 million that the legislature re-appropriated to GDOE for Fiscal Year 2024.

It's funding that Adelup used for Mawar recovery that senators wanted transferred back.

But Adelup contends that the governor was given explicit transfer authority of $50 million for relief spending, and that's where the money went.

That's not how education vice chair Sen. Chris Duenas sees it.

"The governor for some reason does not want to give Department of Education that $20 million. As you know Nestor, from the beginning many of us the reason we passed that appropriation was other ARP monies last year were used for teacher raises of over $20 million," he said. "In fact my first appropriation was $30 million but we compromised to $20 million because we knew the pay raises were gonna cost a lot of money when we passed the pay raises for the entire Government of Guam under the adjusted plan."

Meanwhile, Adelup also says it's using an expedited procurement system through homeland security, that in the end will be reimbursed by FEMA.

But warns that the procurement will stop if the $20 million has to be transferred back to GDOE.

"The issue here is they're stating now that they've gotten around to doing this, this has been months in the works now in terms of what the requests were for the Department of Education up to the DLAN," Duenas said. "So as far as I'm concerned there's absolutely no reason to halt the procurement and as far as I'm concerned that's just a veiled threat. This makes no sense to me Nestor, it's kind of like a red herring if you will. I dont know whether the government of guam has cash flow issues. We know that the hospital is $30 million in arrears to their vendors and so as far as I'm concerned I don't know what's going on but department of education should never give up on that money and that money is reimbursable to the government of Guam so there should be no reason to have it, this amendment should be of no effect. It's a public law. And what the governor is trying to do is to get the department of education to basically say let this be part of recovery money so I don't have to give you that $20 million that's been appropriated to you."

Meanwhile, after meeting with Adelup Monday GDOE said it agreed with the procurement strategy.

So we asked Superintendent Ken Swanson about that today.

"I've never said we don't need that $20 million and how the government agencies work to decide where that's managed that's not my decision. 102

Adelup is adamant that if it transfers the $20 million back GDOE would become the new procuring entity and the procurement would have to start all over.

Added to the mix was another amendment to FY24 budget law that withholds funding for the governor's office operations, until the $20 million is returned.

Caught in the middle, Swanson says it's still just a drop in the bucket.

"$20 million's a great start, and that'll take care of the emergent needs but we have a lot more to do," he said.