The U.S. Commonwealth of the Marianas legislature is considering a bill that would clarify the powers of the Commonwealth Casino Commission. The measure originally passed the House but after the Senate amended it, the bill has gone back to the House.
The amendments took account comments from the attorney general and governor. The AG had complained that the bill as originally written removed the commission from any public oversight by allowing it to operate in secret and be free of lawsuit.
The Senate report added, “Due to the controversial nature of the casino industry and to promote transparency and oversight the casino industry, we…amended the bill to ensure that the Legislature retains its appropriation power with regard to the commission regulatory fund. Although CCC is an autonomous agency, the committee wanted to mandate that all CCC regulations shall be consistent with CNMI laws.”
Senator Justo Quitugua further explained why the House version was amended. “The House version has some provisions that allow the commission to set their own travel per diem, but we deleted it as recommended by the governor. The governor recommended that the commission must follow the standard government travel rules. The commission wants the Legislature to continuously appropriate funding, but we want them to come back every year to justify their funding. We also changed a little bit the provision to make all casino commission employees law-enforcers. We changed that to clarify that only enforcement employees will be considered enforcement officers and not all casino employees,” he said.
