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$400 calculators and $100 sharpener in budget
Thursday,
June 25, 2009
A handwritten budget that Internal Auditor Gaea Perefoti Failautusi presented to the House Budget and Appropriations Committee contained some interesting costs.
The budget listed four calculators costing $400 each and a pencil sharpener with a price tag of $100. Gaea said he had asked for quotes for office equipment and this was the price tag given up by a local company. He said the calculators can handle a lot of functions. Rep. Galu Satele asked if the $100 price tag for a pencil sharpener came with a person to run the pencil through the sharpener.
$100,000 is proposed for the Internal Audit Office and according to Gaea at present the office consists of just himself and a secretary. But he said he intends to hire four other people.
The committee did not take kindly to Gaea submitting a handwritten budget proposal which was not signed to today’s hearing. Gaea apologized that he only received the notice to appear at the hearing yesterday and his secretary was not available to type up his budget plan.
Also before the committee this morning was the Director of the American Samoa Economic Stimulus Office Pat Galeai. The committee was also dissatisfied with the budget proposal that Galeai submitted, which was a copy of a budget plan that he had sent to the Governor back in March.
$330,000 is proposed for the office. The budget listed 8 employees of which five are already on board. Galeai said they hope to obtain stimulus money to pay back local funds used to operate their office. He said they had originally proposed a budget of $369,000 but Treasury said only $330,000 was available. Galeai said they will also be hiring inspectors to monitor compliance with local and federal regulations.
Earlier Treasurer Magalei Logovii informed the committee that the administration has used funds from the General Fund to pay for the Internal Audit Office, the Economic Stimulus Office, and the Independent Prosecutor. He said, "I apologize but we have gone ahead and spent the money and are now coming to the Fono to ask for permission."
Magalei also revealed that the preliminary unaudited financial statement for ASG for fiscal year 2008 shows a deficit of $10 million. He said ASG actually raked in a surplus of $4 million however it had to pay $5 million to ASPA for utility bills that were not included in the budget. This and overruns in some departments accounted for the deficit.
Magalei said this is one reason why the government has not paid $1.3 million that the Fono had passed for the LBJ Hospital. Simply there was no money left over at the end of fiscal year 2008.
The House Budget and Appropriations Committee had decided to wait for revenue collection and expenditure report s for the first two quarters of fiscal year 2009 before deciding what to do with the four money bills that the Governor is asking the Fono to approve.
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