By: Rep. Marissa R. Flores, CNMI House of Representatives
August 14, 2026
I am here to remind the people of this Commonwealth of three things: their vote in 2014, my colleagues’ actions in 2023, and the actions of the Senate in 2025 and 2026.
Memory is the only defense the voters have against a legislature that hopes they will forget. Four dates for the record.
July 6, 2017. In the Fifth Special Session of the 20th Legislature, this House voted on House Bill 20-43 — a bill that used the same structural playbook the Senate has now embraced in Senate Bill 24-53. It amended 1 CMC § 2153 to make the AG’s review of executive-branch rules discretionary, let agencies hire outside counsel without his consent, and added a floor amendment providing that any refusal by the AG to follow political direction “shall be deemed as termination of authority.” A leash, in the plain meaning of the word.
House Bill 20-43 passed the House eleven to eight. Among the eight who stood up and voted no was the late Rep. Francisco “Frank” Santos Dela Cruz of Precinct 3, Saipan. He was joined by Reps. Attao, Barcinas, Lorenzo Deleon Guerrero, Itibus, Propst, Vinson Sablan, and Villagomez. Eight members who saw the playbook for what it was.
January 6, 2019. Rep. Frank Dela Cruz suddenly passed away, reelected to the 21st Legislature but not yet sworn in. This House held a moment of silence. His voice was lost. But his vote on July 6, 2017 remains on the record — and that record speaks for him today. The late Frank cannot rise to warn us against Senate Bill 24-53. So, I am rising in his stead.
March 9, 2023. With Rep. Julie Ogo, Edmund Villagomez, and Denita Yangetmai — Villagomez being one of the late Rep. Frank’s eight — I introduced House Bill 23-22, the Attorney General Investigative Division Act. It would have given the AG a real Investigative Division, real subpoena authority in criminal cases, and a real priority on public corruption. The House passed it on May 10, 2023. The Senate received it the next day.
January 3, 2025. After sitting in the Senate JGL Committee for four hundred and fifty-nine days — no hearing, no reading, no vote — the Senate quietly filed HB 23-22 away. “Senate-Filed,” the record calls it. Two words that mean: the reform is dead, and no one will be asked to defend killing it. That was the action of the Senate in 2025.
August 13, 2026. Nine days after the filing deadline closed for the first open election of the Attorney General since 2014, the same Senate that could not find eight weeks to hear my bill, passed Senate Bill 24-53 by an unanimous vote by all six Senate members present, Senator Corina Mogofna from the Third Senatorial District, Senator Jude Hofschneider and Senate President Karl King-Nabors from the Second Senatorial District, and Senators Ronnie Calvo, Donald Manglona, and Paul Manglona from the First Senatorial District — the bill that hollows out the very office the voters are about to fill. That is the action of the Senate in 2026.
Four dates. One pattern.
The voters of 2014 handed the Attorney General a canoe. In 2017, Rep. Frank Dela Cruz and seven of his colleagues refused to help take away the paddle. In 2023, my co-sponsors and I tried to put more oars in the water. In 2025, the Senate broke those oars in silence. And in 2026, they came back for what was left of the canoe.
I am not here to accuse anyone of anything the record does not already prove. I am here to remind the people of what the record says.
You cannot light a lamp and then close the shutters. You cannot plant a tree and then salt the ground around it. You cannot pass a bill that disarms an elected constitutional office eighty-one days before the voters fill it, and pretend the calendar had nothing to do with your vote.
Public confidence in the rule of law is like a coconut tree. Slow to grow. Generous in the shade it gives. And once it falls, no man alive will see it stand again in his lifetime.
The late Rep. Frank Dela Cruz was right in 2017. My co-sponsors were right in 2023. And in November 3, 2026, the voters of this Commonwealth will remember who honored the promise of 2014 — and who buried it in silence.
Rep. Marissa R. Flores represents Precinct 3, Saipan, in the CNMI House of Representatives. She authored House Bill 23-22, the Attorney General Investigative Division Act, in the 23rd Northern Marianas Commonwealth Legislature. This piece is dedicated to the memory of the late Rep. Francisco “Frank” Santos Dela Cruz.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of NMI News Service.
