In April of 2024, Northern Mariana Islands Governor Arnold Palacios (I) submitted the commonwealth’s revised budget for fiscal year 2025. In an outcome emblematic of the Northern Mariana Islands’ growing economic troubles, the 2025 budget was 3% less than the 2024 budget. In comparison, the United States budget increased by 5% during that same time.
Now, the Northern Mariana Islands’ budget squeeze for fiscal year 2025 has made it to the judiciary—but not in the way one might expect.
The new budget allots the courts $5.3 million in 2025, just over a third of their request for $14.8 million and less than their 2024 budget of $6.5 million. In a statement to the CNMI House, Chief Justice Alexandro Castro mused that budget cuts to the judiciary may force the court to close. “The million-dollar question is ‘Should we keep the court doors open on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota or should we shut it down?’ The answer to that question is in your hands,” he told representatives.
Other officials think the cuts are part of a broader problem. Representative Ralph Yumul (I) groused that all government departments were seeing their funding slashed by 10%, and Associate Justice John Manglona worried about having to lay off judicial employees. Although it remains unlikely the Northern Mariana Islands courts will genuinely close down, the judiciary’s financial troubles will certainly be, as Chief Justice Castro characterized it, a “fiscal tsunami.”
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