May 23, 2014 WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF LESTER CARLSON, JR. ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNOR OF GUAM BILL 309-32 (COR) Hafa Adai Chairman Pangelinan and members of the Committee on Appropriations, Public Debt, Legal Affairs, Retirement, Public Parks, Recreation, Historic Preservation and Land. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on Bill No. 309-32. The Governor opposes this bill. It is an abomination. And if, somehow, eight senators are able to shackle their conscience, face the people and lie to them with empty promises, and mandate unsafe conditions for GW students, Governor Calvo surely will veto this bill. First and foremost, senators, we are beside ourselves with shock that any of you would even consider making it legal for the Department of Education to operate an unsafe and overcrowded high school. Bill No. 309 requires that the minimum enrollment for George Washington High School be 2,700 students. Everyone here knows 2,700 students on any one campus already is dangerous. Will you truly mandate and force DOE to operate every school day with the heightened risk of gang violence, accidents, and lack of adequate supervision? Your support for this bill signals to thousands of parents in Yona, Chalan Pago, Agana Heights, Hagatna, Sinajana, Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Barrigada and Mangilao that you believe they should be forced to send their children to an unsafe school. That this is even being considered as a bill before the Legislature is shameful. This bill would be vetoed on those grounds alone. If that weren’t bad enough, the Legislature has proposed trashing DOE’s autonomy by micromanaging it. It would be one thing for a governor to try and wrestle for the reins of an executive agency, however, the Legislature’s attempt to usurp the powers of the Superintendent and the Board of Education truly takes the cake. Governor Calvo’s leadership style has been engaging and collaborative with DOE. He has laid out a vision for education, shared that vision with the Superintendent and the Board, opened his door to collaboration with them and the teachers’ union, and allowed all of them to do their jobs the best way they know how. The results have been promising. One thing is certain regarding the ability to direct and manage DOE. The current management team, guided by the Board of Education, is making more progress than DOE would make under the control of the Legislature. Indeed, how can this body guide the curriculum, learning standards, measurement, and accountability structures of an agency of 32,000 clients when it cannot even pass one resolution of support for the military buildup? More importantly, how could we trust the expenditure of over $200 million in public funds to the very body pledging unrealized phantom funds to empty promises in this very piece of legislation we are discussing now. Bill No. 309 makes very worthy appropriations. The problem is the appropriations all are based on money that isn’t in any account, that no one knows will ever come in, and that could very well never materialize. In the financial world, we call that deficit spending. In our homes, we call that irresponsible. And we all know the practice to be called, an ‘empty promise.’ It is wildly reckless, and attempts to play with the emotions of those affected for what can only be assumed to be election-year politics. On top of the recklessness of anyone who votes for this bill, supporters will fail to consider how the General Fund will sustain the additions in personnel mandated by this bill beyond one fiscal year. A sudden and unanticipated increase in Section 30 money may, if it ever materializes, be made by reconciliation and for reimbursement, and not an annual remittance. If your concern, senators, is to ensure any additional Section 30 funds are first appropriated by the Legislature, Governor Calvo turns your attention inward to discuss what seems to be a disagreement the authors of Bill 309 may have with, well, themselves. Bill No. 309 seeks to appropriate unanticipated Section 30 money for education and safety matters. How ironic. It was September 13 last year – just eight short months ago – when I called the Legislature into special session for this very purpose; except they were for bills to appropriate unanticipated Section 30 money that actually was coming in. The first, Bill No. 184-32, was authored by Sen. Aline Yamashita, and sought to appropriate $3 million to fund the facilities master plan needed to make $100 million in renovations to public schools? Sound familiar? It should. Speaker Won Pat decided to overshadow that mandate with copycat legislation that mandates the same thing. The only difference is that it’s eight months later. Construction could have started on Simon Sanchez High School even before the Leave Your Mark class ever raised a red flag had the Legislature passed Sen. Yamashita’s bill eight months ago. The second bill, Bill No. 185, was by Sen. Mike Limtiaco. He wanted to appropriate over $400,000 to purchase police vehicles. The Legislature also failed to pass that appropriation. The third bill was by Sen. Tommy Morrison. He saw the tremendous work GPD, Guam Fire Department and Department of Corrections were doing, and he knew they needed more funding to operate, especially for overtime. So he proposed Bill No. 186, which would appropriate an additional $3 million to cover these operational expenses. Though it turned out Sen. Morrison was right about the need for overtime funding, the Legislature never passed his bill. The final bill was by Sen. Chris Duenas. He wanted to appropriate an additional $9 million for tax refunds. Keeping with its history of reluctance to pay tax refunds, the Legislature also refused to even entertain that bill. Instead, senators ignored the special session. It was based on one thing: Vice Speaker Cruz’s comment that the Governor did not need the Legislature’s appropriation to spend additional Section 30 funding. Vice Speaker Cruz, who is co-author of Bill 309 now, said, “Cut the politics, just cut the checks.” He said legislative appropriation was unnecessary. Governor Calvo cut the checks the very next day, based on the Legislature’s own reading of the Organic Act. No one, not even the author of Bill 309, Sen. Pangelinan, objected to the expenditure of additional Section 30 money. Much like the legislative position on Ritidian, this position on Section 30 monies seems to have flip flopped to something very different from the Legislature’s original position. So, knowing all of this, we must ask, have the authors made up their minds as to how additional Section 30 money is to be used, and will this be their position tomorrow and the day after? This irony and lack of transparency and sincerity from the Legislature is what makes Bill 309’s legislative intent and findings all the more absurd and disturbing. Governor Calvo cannot allow this section to go unnoticed. Far too often the legislative budget committee has made unfounded charges against the Governor’s fiscal team. On the record – because of these various sections of legislative intent and findings written by the budget chairman – are innuendo, lies, and revisions of history about the Governor’s fiscal team. The author writes in this bill that financial transparency is needed because the Governor’s fiscal team withheld notification of additional Section 30 monies from the Legislature. That is a lie. The Legislature received notification of the funds from the U.S. Treasury at the same time the Governor received his electronic notice. If the author is upset that Republican senators beat him to introducing measures, first we would ask him to drop such pettiness, and second we would advise that if he can’t get past such a petty consideration that he at least work faster to get his bills into the Clerk’s office before his colleagues do. To the integrity and credibility of the fiscal team, however, Governor Calvo expresses the following: “I openly challenge the authors of this bill. What have you done? You have created the very deficits my fiscal team has eliminated. You have created the excess reporting requirements our employees of the financial agencies work to the middle of the night without compensation to produce for you. You have created empty promise after empty promise to employees, vendors, and taxpayers owed refunds. Those are empty promises my fiscal team has been fulfilling for those employees, vendors, and taxpayers at a rate not seen in over two decades. While you refuse to open up the financials of the Legislature, my fiscal team has won national recognition for financial transparency and accountability, not to mention the dramatic improvements found in the independent audits and the Performeter for Fiscal Year 2012. The slander against them in bill after bill from the Legislature is intolerable. Our team works very hard. Theirs is a strong commitment to excellence in service to the people that, even if mimicked by senators could not produce the same level of results.” On the totality of the bill, Governor Calvo has this to say: “I realize that much of what you do is positioned to impart a political objective against me, but I wonder whether you ever consider the true consequence of your actions to the innocent who become collateral damage on your way to attacking the administration. It’s like the Serpent who waved the fruit constantly in the Garden. The journey we’ve taken to fix this government and set us on the right course is our effort to build Eden. It is clear to me that some senators will stop at nothing to destroy her for the blind want of position and power. This bill isn’t the only problem. It’s just the latest in a series of attempts to destroy what we have gained with just one wrong decision. I will veto this measure and any other like it, which threatens the progress we have made to reverse the decay of the failed fiscal and social policies that have come from the authors of this bill.” Every aspect of this bill is wrong. It must not receive any support and should be killed immediately. Thank you for your time today, senators. We hope you each make the right decision. Senseramente, Lester Carlson, Jr. On behalf of the Governor
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 01:36:19 +0000