As the rest of America is coping with the federal government shutdown, curious things occurring simultaneously in the Government of Guam has me scratching my head.
While hundreds of federal workers here are furloughed, the Office of the Governor of Guam announces that they are doling out pay raises to law enforcement personnel. Adelup opines that the 20 percent raise law enforcement officers have been waiting for years to receive will be given in December. In that same month, employees will start getting checks for the retroactive pay they are also entitled to. This liability is about $20 million, so the back-pay will be made in phases. Not too long after the pay raise announcement, a member of the Guam Legislature asked the Administration to include the Judiciary of Guam and some left out uniformed officers in the implementation of the remaining 20 percent law enforcement compensation.
I think that we have our priorities all wrong.
Without a federal budget, the impacts are already far reaching across the federal agencies doing business on Guam. Should local public policy makers be focusing their time on how to mitigate the economic losses for each day that passes with Guam's federal workforce on furlough?
New business opportunities are but a trickle on the government website www.fbo.gov. Staff are not even on the bases or the federal offices. Phone calls to the Feds go right to voice mail-scripted explanations are aplenty. Emails to NAVFAC Marianas and the other federal family members are going unread and unanswered. The Feds cancelled training trips to the Marianas and all associated reservations at area hotels were cancelled too.
The private sector saw this coming for months and many businesses, large and small, have had to adjust our collective schedules and financial projections for work with this important engine of Guam's economy. What averaged over $1.25 Billion from 1997 to 2010, federal expenditures took a steep decline in 2011 and has never looked up since-thanks to the delay of the Guam Realignment. DOD activity of Guam makes up more than 50 percent of the total per capita federal expenditure and the other federal agencies here bring in the rest.
Instead of working to mitigate the damage of the federal shutdown to our economy in the days ahead, policy makers have used this poor excuse for decision making as a way to show their complete disregard for fiscal restraint in these unknown economic times. Can we trust that the soothsayers in Gov Guam are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel that the rest of us are not seeing today?
Tourism is up, but cannot sustain the losses the federal spend will have in our stores and our respective villages with each passing day. Each shutdown minute has an impact. Each shutdown hour keeps limited funds out of circulation. Each day with a lack of a decision in Congress and the White House will have a impact our collective pocket books
.
Can I be so bold and offer some advice? WAKE UP! Government cannot be all things to all people. We will not achieve our destiny as a people by continuing to perpetuate the have and have not mentality that is running from Yigo to Malesso. This lack of foresight at the Governors' Complex and Hessler Street is another example of an attitude that continues to impede our ability to grow as an modern island community in Magnificent Micronesia and the Pacific Rim. Island leaders need to realize that such cavalier actions to provide benefit to the few at the expense of the many must stop. With the lack of action in Washington DC, we really do need to pay attention to what is happening in the Belt Way and adjust to the new normal in America and do so very fast.