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Rule Reform Panel tasked with cutting excessive costs and ‘red tape’

Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga
fili@samoanews.com

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga has requested executive branch cabinet members to “fully cooperate” with the governor’s Rule Reform Panel (RRP). The panel was established to alleviate unnecessary public costs and regulatory burdens placed on the American Samoan people.

The panel is tasked with training designated agencies’ Rule Reform Officers (RROs) and bringing “your agency’s rule revisions, repeals and even new rules through the reform process and finally to my attention for review and approval.”

In a Feb. 27th memo before leaving for his off island trip, the governor told cabinet members that he has requested the panel’s chairperson — Jerome Ieremo, who is the representative on the panel for the Governor’s Office — “to inform me of any agencies who have yet to appoint an RRO.”

The panel was established last year by the governor through an executive order which “affirmed” the Executive Branch’s “policy" to alleviate unnecessary public costs and regulatory burdens placed on the American Samoan people. (See Samoa News edition Feb. 5, 2019 for details).

In the Feb. 27th memo, the governor points out that the 2019 executive order, “underscored the needed articulation and establishment of a clearly delineated process to ensure that a coherent and an efficient Rule Making System exists” within ASG that “will continually foster the creation of rules and regulations that will guarantee the minimization of financial burdens” on American Samoa residents.

According to the governor, the implementation of the executive order through the RRP process, which he has approved, will afford cabinet members with an opportunity to put in place improvements based on the valuable experience they have gained working in the administration.

He recalled announcing in several cabinet meetings that one of the Administration’s goals “is to leave the executive branch better off then when I first took the helm.” And he has encouraged cabinet members “to use the knowledge and experience they have gained during this administration to implement measures that will have your agency or office in an efficient operation status for your successors.”

Lolo is confident that the rule reform project “will allow you to do this,” according to the memo to cabinet members.
Besides the Governor’s Office, other members of the panel are representatives from  Department of Legal Affairs, Budget and Planning Office, Treasury Department, and Administrative Law Judge Office.