More problems found in Fiscal Year 2019 budget bill 323
Hagåtña — There’s a shortfall in funding for the Department of Public Health and Social Services for operations and for some of the island’s most vulnerable.
Several Special Funds under DPHSS that support important programs, such as environmental health, were not appropriated.
“These seemingly small errors can’t allow be allowed to slip through — not at a point where we are trying to balance the Fiscal Year 2019 budget to help ensure stability following the chaos created when Sen. Mike San Nicolas led a group of senators to repeal a solution and fail to replace it with a viable option,” Governor Calvo stated. “We’ve found a series of errors in this budget and unfortunately, following the chaos that has been occurring because of the lack of leadership. I don’t know that I can trust them to find a way to fix this problem.”
Further MIP is short by about $2 million (from $15.8M to $13.9M) and Medicaid is short by more than $1 million (from $14.3M to $13.1M) – this restricts the amount of help we can use to help our people with medical services.
Speaker BJ Cruz and Sen. Frank Aguon – who oversee the legislative committee on appropriations – and Legislative Secretary Sen. Regine Biscoe Lee — who is charged with transmitting legislation — allowed these errors, which will have a profound impact on the budget.
The Governor’s authority to enact duly passed legislation is the people of Guam’s last line of defense against chaos. As such, we raise these issues as we continue our review of Bill 323.
