As budget hearings are in full swing, KUAM asked NMI Gov. Arnold Palacios about the outlook for the next fiscal year.

“We are maintaining the 70-hour austerity as it is. There are going to be additional cuts across the board and that is because, to the extent that we are able to, we are going to pay attention to the Supreme Court slip opinion regarding the resources to PSS,” said Palacios.

The CNMI Constitution requires 25% of the annual budget for the CNMI Public School System. He said the Board of Education warned that an insufficient budget could lead to a four-day school week.

“We are revising their budget upwards from $27M to $33.6M -- that would keep the schools open five days a week,” he said.

He added PSS initially asked for about $38 million. Now the question: Who pays for it?

“We are not going to change the revenue projection, so we are going to cut everybody’s operation and we will figure if we will do that by giving the option to agencies where they want to cut, whether it is personnel, or operations, or others. But we will give that flexibility but we will maintain a very austere projection,” he said.

He said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the economy will improve.

“There’s going to be some cuts across. No body is going to be happy and I am not happy about it,” he added