COMWRONG-21: Long before DOGE, Guam had a 'rightsizing' commission

From the Publishers Desk By Mar-Vic Cagurangan

"Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before."— Franz Kafka

Most were shocked when the freshly created Department of Government Efficiency started doing what it is tasked to do: shrink the federal government. The goal, according to President Trump’s executive order, is to “eliminate or reduce to the minimum level of activity and expenditure required by law unnecessary governmental entities and federal advisory committees.”

DOGE is now part of the American vocabulary. It is dreadful, it is delightful—depending on where one stands.

Guam is particularly surprised to find out that debloating bureaucracy is possible. At the local level, “modernizing the government” and “maximizing efficiency” are pointless ornaments in government press releases.

Streamlining is an occasional buzzword in the government of Guam. But the fervor always fizzles out. Discussions on consolidating redundant agencies were shelved, while some bills produced by every Guam legislature trap us further into the sticky web of rules. Several bills propose the creation of new entities and new requirements for every move we make and every breath we take.

When Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero assumed office in 2019, the transition committee she had formed produced a 215-page report, which recommended, among other things, merging and consolidating redundant agencies and abolishing useless boards and commissions. The transition committee listed 112 boards, commissions and councils with a combined total of about 945 statutorily required members.

ADVERTISEMENT

At a legislative hearing in February 2019, Anita Arriola, a committee member, said she found it “astounding that there were that many commissions and boards, and that many members that were required to be filled on an island as small as ours.”

The report, with corresponding recommendations, identified areas where costs could be reduced and efficiencies improved. It listed government services and programs that needed to be streamlined and agencies that could be consolidated.

The committee recommended the abolition of 16 boards and commissions that had not met in many years and outlived their missions. The commissions remained in existence despite the enactment of P.L. 26-119, which requires the abolition of boards, commissions, councils or oversight bodies that have "not met in the last 12 months."

We’ve never heard of the result since the transition report was submitted to the governor and publicly heard by the legislature.

Meanwhile, Sen. William Parkinson has introduced a bill proposing “merit-based” employment in GovGuam and eliminating the “pari pari” system. It’s a shame that a law is needed to implement common sense in government.

Long before DOGE, we had the now-forgotten “Modernization and Rightsizing Commission of the Government of Guam for the Twenty First Century and Beyond,” or COMRIGHT-21, whose purpose was to “promote simplicity, economy, efficiency, modernization, and streamlining of the delivery of services by the executive branch of the government of Guam.”  

COMRIGHT-21 sounds epic, like a spaceship. But for all its good intentions, the law that created this body headed for an epic failure because it suffered from its own irony.

The commission was designed to serve as the “clearinghouse” for all recommendations related to the simplification and streamlining of government processes. The goal was to “rightsize the government of Guam by merging, consolidating and abolishing agencies and programs with duplicate and overlapping functions.

COMRIGHT-21 was first enacted in 2006 and amended in 2007. No one knew what the commission had actually accomplished or if it was ever empaneled. It was simply forgotten until it was revived in 2012 in the 31st Guam Legislature with a new amendment to give the commission a new job: to repeal “unfunded and underutilized statutes.”

Ironically, the statute that created the commission fell in the “unfunded and underutilized” category, which made it a self-negating law, and the commission a self-annihilating entity.

In other words, GovGuam has never been rightsized.

At the White House, Trump’s federal cuts are relentless, affecting Guam’s federally funded programs and services. Since GovGuam cannot control Trump’s axe, it must start adjusting its own expectations and DOGE-ify itself.

Subscribe to

our digital

monthly edition