THE University of Guam, Guam Community College and the Guam Department of Education, as well as several government agencies, yesterday attended a public hearing convened by Sen. Ben Pangelinan to present the current status of performance appraisals and salary increments implemented by their respective agencies.

The public hearing centered on the executive order enforced to freeze salary step increases for all government of Guam executive branch employees as a way to address deficits in government funds. The hearing also emphasized one of the stipulations of the executive order, which is the continuing implementation of annual performance evaluations for classified employees, in accordance with personnel rules and regulations.

Earlier during the hearing, Pangelinan explained his stand on the order: “The concept of freezing the increments is to save money; doing it by process of executive order does not really save us any money.”

Pangelinan compared the freezing of the increments to not paying out income tax to generate savings since this necessitates borrowing funds in the long run.

Joann Muna, human resource administrator of Guam Community College, reported that GCC did not freeze the salary increments of their staff, despite the enforcement of the EO. Furthermore, they have been complying with the requirement to conduct employee performance evaluation.

“Our interpretation of the EO is that it did not apply to the Guam Community College. So to this date, we have not frozen salary increments for our staff,” Muna explained.

She added that the EO only applies to all “line agencies and instrumentalities of the executive branch of the government of Guam.”

Meanwhile, University of Guam acting chief of human resources Donna Lujan also reported that the university has been conducting performance evaluation reviews for all of its employees However, she said, they have not awarded any salary increments for this fiscal year.

GDOE

GDOE Superintendent Jon Fernandez also reported compliance with the provisions of the EO.

“GDOE is currently complying with the EO, which means that we continue to perform our annual performance evaluations but we are not implementing salary step increases. For the current fiscal year, we estimate that we are talking about 1,400 classified employees and we are estimating the annualized cost of those increments to be about $1.8 million,” Fernandez explained.

He further stated the amount covers both locally- and federally-funded employees.

“We became aware of the Attorney General’s opinion with our discussions with [the Bureau of Budget and Management Research] and have shared our concerns about the potential liability for the department with regard to our federal funds. Of course, we worry about being able to pay out obligations using those federal funds before they lapse or expire,” Fernandez said.

Pangelinan concluded the hearing with the hope that the EO will be re-evaluated.

“If we are asking people to work harder because we are not hiring new people or we are not replacing those that leave, at least we would implement the increment that is due to them. Nothing extra, nothing above ordinary – just what is due to them by virtue of their tenure within the government of Guam,” he stressed.