PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Ben Pangelinan

HAGATNA, Guam (Marianas Variety, Oct. 2) – The governor of Guam signed Bill 174 setting forth the appropriations for the operations of the government for fiscal year 2008. According to a release from his office, he is doing it in protest because it leaves the departments and agencies short in funding for operations.

This is hard to understand since a majority of the budgets for the departments were increased by the respective legislative committees. I remember Acting Police Chief Paul Suba being taken to task by former Police Chief and now Senator Frank Ishizaki that the budget ceiling as proposed and submitted by the governor was just not acceptable and how could he defend it. It was not and he could not and eventually the appropriation level was adjusted and the public safety agency was given more money.

Perhaps the biggest folly of the governor’s budget was the contention by the Department of Public Works that they did not need to budget for gasoline for the school buses. The director was insistent that the governor will find the money elsewhere and transfer it to the department when it came time to buy gas for the school buses.

These budget insanities were presented to the Legislature in the governor’s proposal that included US$250 million in bond borrowing and US$50 million in tax increases. With all this money, the governor still did not provide the needed US$600,000 for gasoline for the school buses. Can you think of anything more basic and necessary than gasoline for the buses to get our children to school? Obviously the governor didn’t, since in his US$504 million budget and the US$250 million in bonds, he did not even put this amount in the budget for Department of Public Works bus operations. I made sure that this was budgeted in Bill 174.

So maybe the appropriation levels are not what he is speaking of and truth be told, it is the revenues that present the problem. There were some discussions with the revenues at the beginning of the budget session. First the administration indicated that it wanted more money to run the government. They proposed that taxes be imposed on previously untaxed activities, such as wholesale. They wanted to tax bank income differently and double real estate taxes. All total, US$50 million more in taxes for the government.

What was interesting is that both the administration and the Committee on Finance agreed that the revenue projections developed using different methodologies were within 2 percent of each other. Both budget bills contained bond borrowing; the administration’s US$250 million and the Legislature’s US$205 million.

With so much in common, except for the tax increases and all the debate and speculation done, what must now happen is that everyone work the plan. The administration needs to follow the spending priorities and levels passed by the Legislature. The Legislature must begin exercising its oversight powers and authority to ensure that the spending plan is followed, compare the assumptions and projections to the actual and be prepared to resolve the differences.

We must all put aside the disagreements, differences and egos and accept the numbers as they fall and remember the old saying:

Figures don’t lie. When they do not support our position, let’s resist the temptation to begin figuring.

[Ben Pangelinan is a senator in the 29th Guam Legislature and a former speaker now serving his seventh term in the Guam Legislature.]

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