| Congressman Faleomavaega announced today that the Interior
Appropriations bill, from which the American Samoa Government gets a portion
of its funding, will not be signed into law by September 30th, the last
day of the current fiscal year. A law allowing the federal government
to operate through October 6th has passed the U.S. House and Senate, and
is expected to be signed by President Clinton by September 30th.
ASG will continue to receive federal funding for its operations on schedule
and in the normal amount.
“I want to thank Danny Aranza and his staff at the Office of Insular
Affairs for making the necessary arrangements to ensure ASG receives its
operations funding on time. Because the Department of the Interior
will only be funded for six days of the new fiscal year, OIA had to make
a special request to forward to ASG a full month’s operations’ funding,”
said Faleomavaega.
The Interior Appropriations bill passed both the House and Senate
in July, but negotiations were stuck on several provisions called “environmental
riders”. Among the sticking points this year are forest thinning
to reduce the chance of catastrophic fires in our national forests, and
salmon recovery efforts in the Northwest United States. The most
complex negotiations have been over President Clinton’s land legacy initiative,
and separate legislation which would have authorized $3 billion per year
for 15 years from the sale of off-shore oil and gas leases to preserve
environmentally-important land. “Negotiators did not reach agreement
on this issue until Thursday,” said the Congressman, “and it appears American
Samoa will derive significant benefit from this provision, as I have previously
reported.”
“Although there has been talk of Congress convening after the election
to resolve the budget, there is now a general consensus that these matters
should be resolved before the upcoming elections,” concluded the Congressman.
The Interior Appropriations conference report was filed today, and
the House is expected to consider the bill on October 2nd. |
![[106th Congress]](/faleomavaega/press/press_2000/images/106.jpg)
