The Guam Election Commission (GEC) does not know how much it will be getting in the upcoming fiscal year. Executive Director Maria Pangelinan says in the first substitute budget bill, over $900,000 was budgeted for GEC. However, in the current version of the recently passed Bill 38, GEC was lumped into the Executive Branch’s budget. She notes their appropriation was lumped together before in previous budgets. However, no line item has identified what GEC would receive this time around. Pangelinan says this is a problem as they prepare for the 2014 gubernatorial election. She also explains the money to fix two of their tabulators is not factored in yet because they just received the notice today [Wednesday] about the overall costs.
“With the tabulators, we just got a letter from Election Systems and Software that’s saying that if we’re going to get tabulators repaired, we must send them off-island,” said Pangelinan. “So the cost that they’re giving us is $35,000 per tabulator for repairs and that includes round trip shipments for the tabulators.”
Pangelinan adds a total of $70,000 would need to be forked out, but that will be discussed at their board meeting this evening at the GCIC building. She also says they are drafting the procurement process to possibly purchase new equipment and conduct a cost comparison.
Source: GEC: $70,000 To Fix Two Tabulators; FY 2014 Budget Now Unknown.