| Congressman Faleomavaega announced that earlier today
the U.S. House of Representatives passed the appropriations bill which
will fund the Department of the Interior for fiscal year 2001, beginning
this October 1st. American Samoa’s operations funding of $23.1 million
and CIP funding of $10.1 million was included.
“There are many controversial provisions in this year’s legislation
having to do with the environment and the use of public lands, but at least
for this year, no one objected to ASG’s funding in the House,” said Faleomavaega.
For the past several years, the House and Senate Appropriations
Committees have been including language in their committee reports alerting
ASG to possible future action if ASG does not get its finances in order.
This year, the House Appropriations Committee made its strongest statement
yet in that regard, indicating that next year it may reduce ASG’s operations
funding for the first time. The report stated in part:
“The Committee is still very concerned about continuing fiscal
problems in American Samoa. The Committee encourages the American
Samoa government to take decisive action to control its costs and payroll,
and enhance its revenues in accordance with the previous recommendations
and any new financial recovery plan that may be developed as a result
of the tobacco loan program provided last year. The Committee expects
the Governor of American Samoa and the Secretary of the Interior to complete
an MOU, which clearly stipulates fiscal and operations reforms and cost
reductions with clear benchmarks. If this is not completed and implemented
by the time the Committee considers the fiscal year 2002 Interior appropriations
bill, the Committee will seriously consider reducing the next American
Samoa government operations appropriation.”
Congressman Faleomavaega has written to Governor Tauese to bring
this new report to his attention. In his letter the Congressman stated:
“In my opinion, any reduction in ASG’s operations funding would be detrimental
to the local government and to the people of American Samoa.. Furthermore,
I believe this is the wrong approach to take, and will do all I can to
prevent it.”
Faleomavaega also noted that should one of the appropriations committees
attempt to reduce ASG’s operations funding, whether or not they succeed
will depend on the steps ASG takes between now and next spring to improve
ASG’s finances.
After reviewing the committee report, Faleomavaega said, “I remain
grateful to the Appropriations committees for assisting ASG last year by
providing the $18 million loan, but I am very disappointed with this year’s
House report. Governor Tauese has made progress over the last three
years instituting new procedures which should lead to the control of costs,
and is actively engaged negotiating the provisions of the MOU necessary
to obtain the tobacco loan money. While both the House and Senate
Appropriations Committees have been sending “shots across the bow” for
several years, reducing operations funding will only exacerbate an already
difficult problem. There are other ways to address this problem,
and I will do everything I can over the next year in working with ASG and
my Republican colleagues to try to prevent a reduction in operations funding.”
The overall bill is $302 million less than current year funding
and $1.7 billion below President Clinton’s request. |
![[106th Congress]](/faleomavaega/press/press_2000/images/106.jpg)
