What the debate didn’t say about housing, and why GovGuam cannot procure its way out of the wait
Opinion by Samuel S. Kim for The Commons, Kandit News and Views
On Sunday evening I listened to the gubernatorial debate the way many of us did, half attentive and half hopeful, waiting for a particular word. The candidates spoke about affordability, about permits, about the cost of living that presses on every household here. But the word I was listening for never quite arrived. It was own. Not rent more cheaply, not qualify for assistance, not wait for a unit to open. Own: a key that belongs to you, to a door that will still be yours when your children are grown.
I know that word can be an ordinary expectation. When I lived and worked in Singapore, I came to understand that most of the people I passed each morning were going home, in the evening, to flats the state had built and they themselves owned. That was not luck. In 2024, nearly ninety-one per cent of Singapore’s resident households lived in homes they owned, and about three in four lived in public housing.[1] The program that made this possible began in 1964, when the state started selling its flats to the people who lived in them.[2]
Guam’s arithmetic runs the other way. A government study identified a need for 9,908 additional housing units between 2020 and 2025, for the civilian community alone.[3] The island’s housing authority manages 751 public units.[4] Meanwhile, the Navy is seeking 2,400 units from the private market for its own personnel, 1,317 of them by mid-2028.[3] Add those to a civilian shortfall that no published count has shown closing, and Guam needs roughly eleven thousand homes in about two years. A young family here is not competing with a neighbor for a home so much as with the clock. We will not close that gap by asking the old machinery to run faster.
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Here is what surprised me when I looked closely at how Singapore builds. Its housing board does not pour the concrete itself. It puts construction out to bid among private contractors, as we do. The difference is in how. Contractors must be registered, rated, and experienced before they can bid; the board spreads work so that no firm is overstretched; and bids are scored on both price and quality.[5] When two contractors collapsed mid-project in 2021, the board installed replacements in about a month, rather than the three or four months a fresh round of bidding would have taken, because the bench was already built.[6] And every government contract put out to bid is posted on a single public portal, along with who won it, for how much, and for which agency.[7]
That is procurement made fast by design and honest by default.
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Guam’s procurement law was modeled on a code that the American Bar Association approved in 1979.[8] It was written for a world of carbon copies and filing cabinets, a world in which the only way to prevent favoritism was to slow everything down until every step could be witnessed. Those rules were not foolish. They exist because public money was misused, and because the people deserved to see how their government spent. The purpose of procurement was never paperwork. It was trust.
We are now paying for that trust in time, and still not getting it. At a procurement summit last year, the general manager of the Guam Power Authority described a solar and battery project held up for two years by a protest, the formal challenge a losing bidder can file.[9] And the process hides a quieter trap: it stalls when one party simply does not act. Late last year, a bidder on the Simon Sanchez High School project filed the first of three protests with the Department of Public Works. The protest alone froze the project. With none of the three decided, the bidder appealed to the Office of Public Accountability. The hearing officer dismissed it. Guam law allows an appeal only from a protest decision, and none had been issued, so there was nothing for the office to rule on.[10] No one broke a rule. The rules let the clock stop.
Training matters. But no amount of training can shorten a process that is slow by design, or move a step that the law requires and no one is compelled to take. GovGuam cannot train its way out of this. It cannot procure its way out of a procurement problem.
So I would ask the next administration, whoever the voters choose, to return to first principles. Why did we build these rules? To prevent waste, favoritism, and secrecy. Then ask a harder question: which of those dangers can now be guarded against by tools that did not exist in 1979? A contract can be published the hour it is signed. A project can report its spending and progress every week to a page any resident can open on a phone. Sunlight that once required a clerk and a cabinet can now be automatic.
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Once the work is visible, a different kind of competition becomes possible. Let the government’s own teams, the people who already know our roads and our soil, take on the work and report openly on its cost and pace. Then invite any firm that believes it can do the same work faster or for less to bid on the next phase. Have the bids judged by someone with no stake in either, and let the better offer win.
In the nineteen-nineties, Indianapolis let city departments bid against private companies for public work, beginning with a contract to repair potholes.[11] By the former mayor’s account, the city ran about eighty such competitions; some were won by public employees, and some by private firms.[12] The point was never to punish government workers. It was to give the good ones a fair chance to prove it, and to give residents the best work their money could buy.
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Speed also depends on what we choose to build. Eleven thousand homes in two years will not come from crews pouring one house at a time. They can come from factories. Korea’s public housing corporation, LH, has been assembling apartment blocks from modules made off-site. At a 416-unit project in Sejong, each module was set in about thirty minutes, and a twenty-two-story modular tower is now rising in Uiwang.[13] The method is not yet cheaper; in 2024, LH’s chief executive put the premium at about thirty per cent, with LH aiming to match the conventional price by 2030.[13] Its advantage is time, the one thing Guam’s families no longer have. Here, such buildings would have to withstand typhoons and earthquakes, and prove it before the first module ships. And once they stand, they should be sold to the families who live in them, at subsidized prices that adjust to each household’s income, as Singapore does.[14]
If private insurers will not cover a kind of building they have never seen, that hesitation should not become the bottleneck. Hawaii once filled a gap like this. After Hurricane Iniki, most private insurers stopped covering property there, and mortgage lenders began foreclosing. In 1993 the state created its own hurricane fund, and in 2000, once private insurers had returned, the fund stopped writing new policies.[15] That is what government is for: carrying a risk the market is too cautious to take, until the market is ready to take it back.
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I am a newcomer here, and I am careful about what I presume to know. But I do know what a key means to a family. It means a child who does not change schools every year. It means grandparents who can stay close. It means the dignity of tending something that is yours.
I was raised to believe that the measure of leadership is how it treats the household with the least room, and that a promise kept quietly is worth more than one made loudly. Whoever takes the oath in January will inherit a housing shortage that does not care which party wins, and it will not arrive alone. Guam’s troubles are many, and they will not yield to old remedies in new slogans. They call for pragmatic leaders who look past the solutions we have always reached for and act on what can be done now. Begin with one building: made in a factory, built for our typhoons, its costs posted every week, and sold to the families who move in. Not in two or three years, after another study and another round of protests. Now.
I hope that person will look past the lines that divide us, sit down with the people who can actually build, and open the work to the light. The families waiting for a door of their own have been patient long enough.
About the Author
Samuel S. Kim is a technology executive with over twenty years of R&D leadership, including founding a 60-person research division in Seoul. He holds an economics degree from UCLA and lives in Guam. He can be contacted at sk102.co.
[End notes are provided in the Kandit website version of this column]
Storm Could Develop and Reach the Marianas This Weekend
By Troy Torres, Kandit News
[Editor's note: The National Weather Service Guam office caveats all forecasts as being subject to change and to higher levels of uncertainty during the early development of storms. The information below includes early forecasts for a system that is relatively far away. NWS advises residents of the Marianas to continue monitoring information coming from NWS]
(Monday, October 12, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. ChST)--Some variation of a storm could develop and reach the Mariana Islands this weekend, according to information Monday morning from Charlie Ogle, general meteorologist with the National Weather Service Guam office.
"There is high uncertainty for intensity when it passes the Marianas this weekend," Mr. Ogle said of what is now Invest 96W, an area of investigation north of Kosrae that the Joint Typhoon Warning Center has opened and has classified as likely for development into a tropical cyclone outside of 24 hours.
"We are fairly confident it will continue to organize," Mr. Ogle said, adding that while its expected intensity is uncertain, there is more certainty that a storm resulting from its organization will reach the Mariana Islands Saturday or Sunday.
Models show a potential storm center traveling anywhere south of Guam to north of Saipan near Alamagan, he said. "The average of ensembles show it moving closer to Tinian and Saipan," he said, adding "That can change over the next several days."
As of this morning's forecast, the system can organize and move through the Mariana Islands "anywhere from a weak tropical storm to a typhoon," he said. "Conditions are definitely favorable for development."
Invest 96W is fairly stationary as of this morning, but with a slow southward movement, Mr. Ogle said. It is expected to bring heavier rains and gustier winds to Pohnpei and Kosrae later today, he added. As it organizes, it is expected to move west.
In a statement dated 9:15 p.m. last night, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported Invest 96W showing 20 to 25 kt winds (about 23 to 28 mph) along the southern periphery of the cusp along the westerly wind burst. "Environmental analysis reveals a favorable area for development," the JTWC statement reads.
The Leon Guerrero administration is working on the roll out of a round of Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits following President Trump's Super Typhoon Bavi-related major disaster declaration for Guam, Therese Arriola confirmed.
"Yes that's the trigger," Ms. Arriola, the director of the Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services, said about the federal rule that allows her agency to request the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Administration to fund the disaster program. "We are meeting with FNA and my SNAP program for roll-out ASAP," she wrote to Kandit.
D-SNAP provides eligible households with one month of food assistance benefits that equal the maximum amount of benefits that a household of that same size would get if it qualified for SNAP, according to USDA. SNAP is the regular federal food assistance program for more than 40,000 Guamanians whose households fall within a lower income bracket. D-SNAP primarily provides that same type of assistance to people who don't typically qualify for SNAP, and who in some way were affected by the disaster the program is opened to address, USDA guidance on its website explains.
"Households not normally eligible for SNAP may qualify for D-SNAP as a result of their disaster-related expenses, such as loss of income, damage to property, relocation expenses, and, in some cases, loss of food due to power outages," USDA guidance published to its website states.
Some households that already receive SNAP may qualify for D-SNAP, according to the federal guidance.
"When States operate a D-SNAP, ongoing SNAP clients can also receive disaster food assistance. Households with disaster losses whose SNAP benefits are less than the monthly maximum can request a supplement," the USDA memo states. "The supplement brings their benefits up to the maximum for the household size. This provides equity between DSNAP households and SNAP households receiving disaster assistance."
According to the federal memo, now that Mr. Trump has made the major disaster declaration, which includes authorization for the individual assistance program, Guam's state agency - DPHSS - can request for USDA's FNA to open a D-SNAP program.
"We are working on the plan now," Ms. Arriola said. "We will share when we have firm information."
Guam keeps paying to fill the seats. The harder work is giving people a reason to sit in them.
Opinion by Samuel S. Kim for The Commons, Kandit News and Views
Last November, an airliner left Busan for Guam with a hundred and eighty seats and three passengers. Six airline employees made the trip as well, outnumbering the customers two to one.[1] The flight was not a scheduling error. When Korea’s antitrust regulator approved the merger of Korean Air and Asiana, it required the combined group’s carriers to keep flying Guam at ninety per cent of their 2019 capacity. The rule could guarantee the seats. It could not guarantee anyone who wanted to sit in them.
In September, five of those airlines asked to cut back to seventy per cent, citing weak demand. A commission examiner has recommended refusing them, and a final decision is pending.[1] For now, the planes will keep coming, lightly loaded, to an island whose largest private industry depends on them.[2]
On Guam, those empty seats have mostly been read as a demand problem, and the answer has been to buy more flights and run more ads. The Legislature approved ten million dollars for airline incentives and marketing.[3] The Guam Visitors Bureau advertised aboard Korean Air flights, ran cashback offers with payment companies, and backed fare discounts on the Busan route.[4] I saw the effort myself. Running on a treadmill at a gym in Korea, I looked up at the wall screen and there was Guam: turquoise water, white sand, a family laughing in the surf. Someone had worked hard on that ad, and it showed.
For a while, it worked. December, 2025, brought 95,141 visitors, the island’s best month since the pandemic.[5] Then came Super Typhoon Sinlaku in April, higher jet-fuel surcharges, and fewer seats from Korea.[6] Fares climbed, and by July arrivals had fallen thirty-seven per cent from a year earlier.[4] Shocks like these strike every destination. The ones with loyal repeat visitors recover; the ones whose demand was bought wait for the next subsidy.
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The family in what follows is a composite. Each thing that happens to them, though, has happened, or is there to be seen.
They live in Busan. The father saw the ad, and the fare was easy to like, helped along by the discounts Guam had paid for. The hotel rates were harder. Four nights in Tumon cost more than he had hoped, and he let the booking page sit open for a week. Then his wife pointed out that their children had never seen water that color. They booked.
The air, when they land, is warm and soft, exactly as advertised. The ride to the hotel is less so. The road from the airport is patched and uneven. Lane lines have faded to suggestions. The grass on the medians has been mowed, but weeds grow untouched from the cracks, and the curb paint has nearly worn away. Near the end of the ride, the van passes the empty shell of the Verona Resort.[7] The children, looking out the window, are quiet.
The next morning, Guam keeps its promise. Tumon Bay is clear and calm, and the children do not want to leave the water. If the trip were only the beach, there would be nothing to write about.
At midday, they walk San Vitores Road looking for lunch. Many storefronts are shuttered, and when they look up, the paint on the upper floors is peeling. The signs over the doorways come in every size and style, as if no one ever agreed on what the street should look like. Up the road, a tall resort stands dark. It is the Pacific Star, 436 rooms, closed since its owner went bankrupt; a buyer has promised a renovation but named no reopening date.[8] Farther along, DFS Galleria, the duty-free emporium that anchored Tumon for fifty-five years, has been closed since the end of March. Tumon Sands Plaza, which once housed twenty-one designer boutiques, has emptied out.[9] In Busan, the mother says, buildings like these would be assumed abandoned.
On the second day, they want to see the waterfalls and quiet villages of the south. The red shuttle serves Tumon, the malls, and a few sights nearby, and when it is full it passes the stop.[10] Beyond that, Guam has little public transportation.[2] So the father rents a car. Without clear lane markings, and among drivers who do not always signal their intentions, he grips the wheel more than he enjoys the view. His wife has read that, in February, a Korean family with an infant was robbed at gunpoint, in daylight, outside a mall in Tamuning.[11] After dark, they stay on the well-lit blocks near the hotel.
Dinner is the last surprise. The father converts the bill to won twice, to be sure. The designer shopping that once drew Asian travelers to Guam has largely gone, so on the last afternoon they browse the discount racks instead.
At the airport, a young woman with a tablet asks whether they are likely to come back to Guam. The father says yes. The beach was beautiful, the people at the hotel were kind, and he is a polite man. On the flight home, he and his wife start talking about Fukuoka. It is less than an hour from Busan, the yen is weak, and Korean travelers are economizing almost everywhere except Japan.[12] Last year, 9.46 million Koreans visited Japan, nearly seventy per cent more than before the pandemic.[13]
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That polite yes is in the bureau’s numbers. When it surveyed departing visitors in 2025, ninety-four per cent of Koreans and Japanese said they were likely to come back.[14] Yet the same survey recorded their chief complaints, road conditions and transportation, and that May, arrivals were still fifty-seven and a half per cent below 2019.[14]
The two facts fit together once a pleasant goodbye is no longer mistaken for a promise. People leave fond of Guam’s beaches and its genuinely warm people, and then, the next time they have four days and a budget, they choose Fukuoka. Close to forty per cent of Korean visitors in 2019 had been to Guam before.[15] That loyalty was the island’s real inheritance, and it is being spent down.
The bureau has not been idle. It revived a Sunday night market in Tumon that visitors and residents both enjoy,[16] and it pushed for the property law described below. Its board’s draft recovery plan even lists “product decline” among the industry’s four key challenges.[17] The problem has been named. It has not been funded. The bureau’s 2027 budget request puts about forty-four per cent into marketing and about twenty-eight per cent into everything visitors touch on the ground: beautification, cultural events, and safety.[18] And the bureau does not pave roads, police Tumon, or regulate signs. No single agency can fix this alone.
Guam has, in fact, written this warning into law before. In the nineteen-nineties, the Legislature declared that Tumon had to be revitalized because rival destinations were outmarketing the island.[19] Three decades later, the rivals are still winning.
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The tools to change this are closer than they look. In June, at the bureau board’s request, the governor signed a law applying the International Property Maintenance Code to Tumon’s hotel zone. It takes effect next June.[20] A 2022 law already lets Public Works fine the owners of unsafe abandoned buildings five thousand dollars and set deadlines to repair or demolish them.[21] The same draft recovery plan priced immediate island-wide destination improvements at fourteen million dollars or more, four million more than the island found for airline incentives and marketing.[17]
The signs along San Vitores Road could follow a standard, too. Some municipalities require approval before a new sign or façade goes up in a commercial district. In Brookline, Massachusetts, the design must follow the town’s guidelines and pass review by its Planning Board.[22] Others require the old sign to come down when a business leaves; in Breckenridge, Colorado, it must be removed within fourteen days.[23] A shuttered storefront with its old sign still hanging announces decline. A clean, freshly painted empty space suggests that someone expects the next tenant. Tumon could adopt a standard of its own, drafted with the shopkeepers who must meet it.
What is missing is the sequence. Next June, a Public Works inspector could walk San Vitores Road with the new code in one hand and, in the other, a public list of derelict buildings, the Verona near the top. Behind that inspector would stand a Legislature that funds the road from the airport as faithfully as it funds the seats. And the bureau could measure not only how many visitors arrive but how many return. An island cannot close the gap between “I’ll be back” and the booking that never comes if it cannot see that gap.
Many of us were raised to believe that hospitality begins before the guest knocks: with the swept floor, the fresh linen, the table set with care. It is love made practical. Guam’s visitors already find warmth in its people, at the hotel desk and on the beach. What they need now is to find it in the place itself. That will take landowners, hoteliers, restaurateurs, and residents deciding that the street outside belongs to them, too.
A regulator in Seoul can keep the seats on the plane. Only Guam can give people a reason to sit in them.
About the Author
Samuel S. Kim is a technology executive and licensed business consultant on Guam with over twenty years of R&D leadership, including founding a 60-person research division in Seoul. He holds an economics degree from UCLA. He can be contacted at sk102[dot]co. More of his writing is at sk102[dot]co/insights.
[Endnotes are provided in the Kandit website version of this column]
Week of Violence and Sexual Violence Against Family Members
Seven cases involving violent crimes were charged the past week in Guam, and six of them involved victims who were family members of the alleged assailants. Kandit did not include one of these cases in this report, and will present that story separately.
Felony Sexual Conduct and Strangulation Charges Filed
In a case filed on October 5, 2026, Jesse Quidachay Sudo, 60, was charged with first-degree felony counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and attempted second-degree criminal sexual conduct. According to court documents, a teenage minor filed a walk-in complaint with the Guam Police Department on October 4, 2026. She reported that Sudo, a relative known to her, assaulted her in a bedroom earlier that evening. Authorities noted that Sudo allegedly admitted to touching the minor's "private area" while claiming he was reaching for his phone, later telling police he was sorry.
Brandon Leonelle Tano, 45, faces third-degree felony strangulation alongside misdemeanor charges of assault, family violence, and unlawful restraint. GPD officers responded to an apartment complex in Dededo on October 4, 2026, after a witness reported that a woman had been severely injured. The victim suffered a golf-ball-sized hematoma and a two-inch laceration on her forehead after Tano allegedly headbutted her during an argument that lasted most of the day. She also reported being slapped, choked, and repeatedly restrained from leaving a bedroom. Tano was apprehended by police the following day at Camp Blaz.
Weapon-Related Assaults and Family Violence
In Mongmong, Toytoy Kuss, 27, was arrested early Monday morning on October 5, 2026, following a violent altercation at an apartment complex. Kuss faces a third-degree felony charge of aggravated assault and a misdemeanor assault charge. According to the police affidavit, Kuss arrived at the complex in a rental vehicle, confronted another tenant, and chased him upstairs. Kuss then retrieved a black baseball bat from his apartment and struck the victim twice in the left arm, causing a one-inch laceration and severe swelling. Police later located Kuss and a relative at a nearby market, where the relative surrendered the bat used in the assault.
In a separate weapon-related incident, Terry Reyes Lane, 48, was charged with misdemeanor family violence following a dispute on October 3, 2026. An elderly woman related to Lane reported to police that he became enraged during an argument, overturned a bench, and pointed a weapon at her. Although initially described as a carbine rifle, police later confirmed and confiscated the weapon as a .22 caliber pellet gun. Lane fled the scene but was apprehended by court marshals and GPD officers on October 5, 2026, on outstanding bench warrants. Lane admitted to the argument but denied pointing the pellet gun at the woman.
Alcohol-Fueled Disturbance and Property Damage
Additional family violence charges were filed in two other separate incidents:
Rubyn Jay Cruz was charged with misdemeanor assault and family violence following an early morning disturbance in Tumon on October 3, 2026. The magistrate's report in the case states that a heavily intoxicated Cruz was picked up by family members outside a bar. When a female relative approached him, Cruz allegedly threw her to the ground, threatened to kill her, and punched her in the face three times with a closed fist. Responding officers noted sustained facial redness and dried blood on the victim.
Josiah James Anderson was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief and family violence on October 7, 2026, after a dispute at a home in Dededo. Court documents indicate that after being confronted about child support obligations, Anderson became irate, smashed a table and a cabinet, and threw the broken pieces of wood at the homeowner. He then punched several walls before fleeing the scene. Anderson later admitted to damaging the furniture but claimed the homeowner had slapped him.
_____ All people accused of crimes are presumed innocent in our criminal justice system until proven guilty in a court of law.
Editor’s Note: This article was compiled and generated using artificial intelligence assistance based on official public court records from the Superior Court of Guam. It was reviewed and formatted for publication by Kandit News staff.
Twelve-year-old Kailey Camarin Naputi Mendiola's mother, Karmalin Mendiola Halili has asked Kandit to share the GoFundMe fundraiser that their family has started to raise money so they can pay for Kailey's funeral.
The following is the message shared on the GoFundMe page by Ms. Halili's sister, Joy Haith:
It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share that, on October 6, 2026, our Heavenly Father called our Goddaughter, Kailey Camarin Naputi Mendiola, home to rest.
Our family received news no parent or family could ever be prepared for. Our sister tragically lost her baby girl at only 12 years old. Kailey was a beautiful young soul with so much life ahead of her, taken from us far too soon.
We could write so much about Kailey, but there will never be enough words to truly capture who she was unless you had the privilege of knowing her. She was a bright young girl who loved wholeheartedly, cared deeply, and had a contagious laugh that could fill a room. She spoke her truth and was never afraid to stand out from the crowd.
Kailey resembled her mother in so many ways. Whenever she poured her heart and mind into something, she gave it her all. She showed resilience when she fell or felt like giving up, and she found so much joy in the little things—especially crocheting and drawing.
Kailey had her whole life ahead of her. She was deciding whether she would join track this school year, wondering what she would crochet next, and keeping up with whichever squishy toy was trending so she could bug her mom with videos explaining exactly why she needed to buy it.
These are the moments, the laughter, and the pieces of Kailey that our family will carry with us forever.
As we navigate this unimaginable loss, we are asking, on behalf of our family, for any contribution, no matter the amount, to help with funeral and memorial expenses as her parents take this time to grieve and prepare to lay their baby girl to rest.
If you are unable to donate, sharing this fundraiser and keeping Kailey and our family in your thoughts and prayers would mean just as much to us.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your love, kindness, prayers, and support during this incredibly difficult time.
Kailey Camarin, you will forever be loved and never forgotten.
"[R]espect for military service is demonstrated not only in what we say, but in how we care for those who served and the families who stood beside them." - Chargualaf
Opinion by Anthony "Tony" P. Chargualaf, Jr. for Kandit News and Views
Last week, I Liheslaturan Guåhan took up Bill 343-38, introduced by Senator Therese Terlaje and co-sponsored by Senator Sabina Perez, continuing their work on behalf of Guam’s veterans and military families. The bill provides greater clarity on who qualifies as a spouse or legal guardian for certain benefits available to veterans and their families. These include waivers of driver’s license fees, waivers of annual vehicle registration fees available to qualifying disabled veterans, and government employment preferences that may extend to eligible spouses, surviving spouses, and legal guardians. By clarifying who qualifies and for how long, Bill 343 seeks to ensure these benefits reach the family members and caregivers they were intended to support.
As a veteran of the Guam Air National Guard and Mayor of Inalåhan, I welcome this continued attention to the needs of our veterans and their families. Senators Terlaje and Perez have demonstrated through their legislative work a willingness to turn that commitment into action.
Together, they introduced Resolution 204-38, calling on the federal government to transfer approximately 15 acres of federal property to the Government of Guam and preserve the land for the future expansion of the Guam Veterans Cemetery and the neighboring Masso Reservoir Conservation Area and Watershed. Planning now for the future needs of our veterans cemetery is a practical responsibility we owe to generations of veterans and their families.
This work is not new. During the 34th Guam Legislature, Senator Terlaje authored a series of laws aimed at finding veterans who may not be connected to the services available to them. Public Law 34-86 strengthened efforts to update the Guam Veterans Registry so Veterans Affairs could better identify and reach Guam’s veteran population. Public Law 34-93 required the Department of Revenue and Taxation to forward veterans’ DD-214 forms or other proof of veteran status collected through driver’s licenses and identification cards to Veterans Affairs to keep that registry current. Public Law 34-130 brought those efforts directly into our villages, authorizing mayors to collect veteran information through residency forms and the annual census to help identify veterans and connect them with available services.
During the last legislative term, Senator Terlaje was an author of Public Law 37-76, which appropriated $50,000 to the Guam Office of Veterans Affairs to support an island-wide Veterans Convention intended to connect Guam’s veterans with services, information, and resources.These efforts have also been co-sponsored and supported by other Democratic senators, demonstrating our party’s commitment to supporting Guam’s veterans and their families.
These are tangible actions. They concern whether veterans are identified and connected with services, whether veterans and their families can access benefits, and whether Guam is planning today for the long-term needs of those who served.
There is still much more work ahead. Our veterans deserve better access to health care, stronger assistance navigating federal benefits, support for their families, and persistent advocacy in Washington for services that too often remain difficult to access from Guam.
As a veteran myself, I believe respect for military service is demonstrated not only in what we say, but in how we care for those who served and the families who stood beside them. That responsibility belongs to all of us—veterans and civilians, Democrats and Republicans, and every person entrusted with public office. The record of Therese Terlaje and Sabina Perez reflects a commitment to that responsibility through action.
Our veterans have done their duty for us. We must continue doing ours for them.
_____ Anthony “Tony” P. Chargualaf, Jr. is the chairman of the Democratic Party of Guam. He is the mayor of Inalahan, and a Guam Air National Guard veteran.
The Office of the Attorney General of Guam has filed criminal charges against four people following a string of separate property crimes involving vehicle damage, burglary, and theft.
High-Speed Chase Leads to Stolen Vehicle Arrest
Peter Joel Meno Petros Jr. faces a second-degree felony charge of Theft by Receiving, alongside misdemeanor charges of Eluding a Police Officer, Resisting Arrest, and Reckless Driving. According to court documents, Guam Police Department officers responded to a commercial jobsite at Camp Blaz on October 5, 2026, after a burglary was reported and three company trucks were discovered missing. Later that day, police spotted one of the missing vehicles—a 2015 Toyota Tacoma—leaving a McDonald’s parking lot in Yigo. When officers attempted to pull the truck over, Petros allegedly accelerated, fishtailed, and made abrupt, wide turns that nearly caused collisions with other motorists. After police successfully stopped the vehicle, Petros fled on foot and actively resisted restraint before being taken into custody, according to the report. Questioned by police after he reportedly waived his right to silence, Petros said he received the vehicle from two people named Daryll and Ken.
Woman Charged with Wrecking Cars with Golf Club
Jovina Mercado was charged with two counts of third-degree felony Criminal Mischief to a Motor Vehicle following an October 4, 2026, incident at a Mangilao residence. GPD officers arrived at the scene to find Mercado sitting on a tire with a golf club at her feet. She had allegedly smashed the windshield and passenger window of a 2015 Hyundai Accent, as well as the rear window of a 1989 Nissan pickup truck, causing more than $500 in damage to each vehicle. Authorities noted that Mercado, who made several erratic statements to officers, admitted to damaging the vehicles after becoming upset that she could not borrow one. Mercado committed the alleged offenses while out on felony release for a pending charge.
Yigo Yard Burglary Resolved by Neighbor
Felix Anthony Chargualaf faces charges of third-degree felony Theft and misdemeanor Criminal Trespass following an appliance theft on Chalan Ma Anao Road in Yigo. On October 2, 2026, an $800 pressure washer, two solar lights, and two floodlights were stolen from underneath a residential tin canopy. The property owner was later contacted by a neighbor who spotted Chargualaf in possession of the items at a home on Chalan Mataguac. The stolen items were successfully recovered, and Chargualaf later confessed to GPD officers that he had taken the tools after spotting them under the victim's awning, according to the magistrate's complaint in the case.
Vehicle Window Shattered in Anger
Jackson Kena has been charged with third-degree felony Criminal Mischief to a Motor Vehicle following a domestic disturbance in Yigo on October 6, 2026. GPD officers responded to a residence where they observed a white 2000 Subaru GL van belonging to "Mary's Maids" with a shattered front passenger window. Kena allegedly became angry while sitting in the passenger seat and punched the window out of frustration. Kena surrendered to officers at the home, apologized, and admitted to police that he lost his temper and knew what he did was wrong, according to the magistrate's report in the case.
_____ All people accused of crimes are presumed innocent in our criminal justice system until proven guilty in a court of law.
Editor’s Note: This article was compiled and generated using artificial intelligence assistance based on official public court records from the Superior Court of Guam. It was reviewed and formatted for publication by Kandit News staff.
Seaport 'Recovering Quickly' from Weekend Crisis, Gantry 6 Nears Operation
(Port Authority of Guam news release)--The Port Authority of Guam continues to maintain cargo operations while making further progress in the recovery of its gantry cranes, with Gantry Crane 4 operational and Gantry Crane 6 advancing toward its next major recovery milestone.
Assessments completed so far indicate Gantry 6 is safe to proceed with lowering its boom. If no additional discrepancies are identified during gantry startup, the crane could be ready to boom down as early as this afternoon. Gantry 5 also remains under repair, inspection, and technical assessment. Both Gantries 5 and 6 are back on the rail system.
“We had a serious incident, but we are recovering quickly,” said Port General Manager Rory J. Respicio. “Cargo operations never stopped, we have contingency capacity available if needed, and the remaining cranes are progressing toward service.”
The Port continues to operate with Gantry 4 while coordinating vessel activity with its shipping partners. The Matson Islander was serviced as scheduled, and Lurline operations proceeded as planned. APL remains in the same vessel lineup and is expected tomorrow morning, but is waiting for berth availability because both vessels cannot be accommodated on the wharf at the same time.
There has been some schedule movement as the Port operates with only one gantry crane. Such timing adjustments are not unusual during a recovery period involving major equipment. The vessel lineup has remained in place, cargo operations have continued, and the Port is working directly with the carriers to minimize operational impacts.
“We are not minimizing the impact,” Respicio said. “Operating with one gantry crane has caused some schedule movement, and we are acknowledging that. At the same time, the same vessel lineup has been maintained, cargo continues moving through the Port, and we are making measurable progress toward restoring additional crane capacity.”
From Monday, through 4:00 p.m. today, October 7, 2026, the Port discharged 504 units of cargo, including 283 containers and 221 pieces of break-bulk cargo, and released 116 units into the community. Container discharges included 205 full imports and 78 transshipments, while break-bulk cargo included 210 automobiles and 11 pieces of heavy equipment. Of the cargo released, 63 were containers and 53 were break-bulk units, including 52 automobiles and one piece of heavy equipment. The figures demonstrate that cargo has continued moving through the Port throughout the recovery effort despite operating with reduced gantry crane capacity.
The Port has also completed an emergency procurement to secure temporary crane capacity, which Governor Lou Leon Guerrero authorized immediately. The procurement ensures that a temporary crane is available for deployment if needed, but the Port will not incur deployment costs unless that option is activated. At this time, deployment is not necessary because Gantry 4 is operational and, at the carrier’s request, the Port is continuing operations without bringing in the temporary crane. The temporary crane remains available should operational conditions change.
At the same time, the Port has initiated a formal review of the October 2 incident involving the three gantry cranes. Gantry 6 was locked in position and secured based on the guidance and procedures in place at the time. Guam was not under a tropical storm or typhoon watch or warning, so the Port was not operating under the same full heavy weather posture that would normally accompany a typhoon threat.
The review is examining the securing procedures and customary practices in place, the timing and substance of instructions concerning barriers or other additional securing measures, how those instructions were communicated and carried out, and whether any deviations from those instructions, if any, were authorized.
The review is also looking at the weather information available throughout the day and evening, decisions made at the supervisory, operational, safety, and management levels, and whether established procedures and specific management directions were followed.
The Port will continue providing updates as recovery work progresses and additional information becomes available.
"Money handed to those who already have plenty does not reliably become new jobs." - Kim
"Guam should stop taxing revenue and replace the BPT with a tax on profit. ... The Legislature should direct the Department of Revenue and Taxation to study and recommend a rate that equals the revenue the BPT is expected to raise, with safeguards against profits shifted off-island." - Kim
Opinion by Samuel S. Kim for The Commons, Kandit News and Views
In late 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s budget director said something in a magazine interview that nearly cost him his job. The administration’s new tax cut, David Stockman told a reporter, was “always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.”[1]
The idea inside that horse was older than the horse. Before anyone called it “trickle-down,” economists called it the horse-and-sparrow theory: feed the horse enough oats, and some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. Cut taxes for those at the top, and they will invest, build, and hire, and the benefits will reach everyone else. Reagan sold his cut to Congress as a broad measure that would unleash growth, and over his presidency the top income tax rate fell from 70 percent to 28 percent.[2]
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The retreat began almost immediately. As deficits swelled, Reagan signed a 1982 law scaling back much of the cut, followed by more revenue-raising laws in 1984 and 1987.[3] To be fair, Reagan insisted the 1982 law was not a reversal of his philosophy.[4] But the cuts had not paid for themselves, and the bill came due.
Kansas ran the experiment again in 2012, cutting taxes sharply and promising a surge. Growth trailed the national average every year the cuts lasted, revenue fell short, and in 2017 a Republican legislature repealed most of them over the governor’s veto.[5] Across 18 wealthy nations and fifty years of major tax cuts for the rich, researchers at the London School of Economics and King’s College London found that inequality rose while growth and unemployment showed no significant change.[6] Princeton economist Owen Zidar found that job growth after U.S. tax cuts came largely from relief for lower- and middle-income households, with little from cuts for the top 10 percent.[7]
The sparrows, it turns out, mostly go hungry. Money handed to those who already have plenty does not reliably become new jobs.
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Guam’s Business Privilege Tax is another story altogether, and in one sense the mirror image of trickle-down: a tax that asks the most of those with the least to spare.
To many residents, the BPT sounds like just another tax. It is not. Businesses on Guam already pay an income tax that mirrors the federal code, levied on profit: what remains after wages, rent, inventory, and equipment are paid.[8] The BPT is levied on gross receipts, every dollar that comes through the door. It never asks whether the business made money.[9] On October 1, the general rate fell to 4 percent, unwinding a 5 percent rate adopted in 2018 to replace revenue Guam lost when the 2017 federal tax cut, mirrored into local law, lowered income taxes on the island.[10]
That difference decides what an owner is rewarded for doing.
Under a profit-based tax, reinvestment lowers the bill. A new worker’s wage is deductible. A faster oven, a second delivery truck, or better software is written off over time. Each becomes an asset that lets the business do more with less. When Congress let firms deduct equipment faster, a study of more than 120,000 firms found eligible investment rose 10 to 17 percent, with small firms responding most.[11]
The BPT notices none of it. The new worker’s wages reduce nothing. The new oven reduces nothing. If the investment pays off and sales grow, the tax grows with them.
For a struggling business, the effect can be decisive. In a Tax Foundation illustration, a 1 percent gross receipts tax consumes 20 percent of the profit of a grocer earning a 5 percent margin.[12] By the same arithmetic, a 4 percent BPT equals 80 percent of the grocer’s profit; even the reduced 3 percent rate most small businesses pay takes 60 percent.[13] A business that broke even, or lost money, still owes the full amount.
For an owner at the kitchen table after a hard year, weighing whether to sign another lease, the BPT can be the weight that tips the scale toward closing.
New businesses feel this most. Nationally, roughly one in five new establishments closes within its first year.[14] Under a profit-based tax, a young business owes no income tax until it turns a profit, and its early losses can be carried forward to offset future profits.[15] That breathing room lets a business take root before it is asked to carry its full share. Under the BPT, once a business clears a small exemption, the tax is due on every sale, profitable or not.[13]
The same logic reaches every building on the island. Rent is subject to the BPT, so a landlord pays on every dollar of it.[9] Guam’s income tax lets an owner deduct routine repairs such as fresh paint, a patched roof, or a fixed railing, so the government shares part of the cost of keeping a building sound.[16] The BPT, levied alongside it, shares none. A gallon of paint reduces nothing. The owner who stops at the code minimum and the owner who paints, repairs, and adds years to the building’s life owe the same BPT on the same rent.
Guam can see the result. Lawmakers have put the problem in writing: neglect, one bill found, has left many unsafe structures that blight the island’s landscape.[17] At the far end of that neglect stand buildings like the long-abandoned Verona Resort, visible from Marine Corps Drive as lawmakers weigh maintenance standards for Tumon.[18] No tax alone explains a weathered building; salt air and typhoons are hard on concrete and steel. But a tax system should reward upkeep, not ignore it.
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The BPT has serious defenders, and they have a point. Gross receipts taxes, they note, are simple to administer and steadier than profit-based taxes, which fall sharply in a recession.[19] The governor’s office adds that about 90 percent of businesses already pay a reduced 3 percent rate, and that most full-rate payers are large international firms tied to the military buildup.[13] Guam also cannot freely rewrite its income tax; the mirror code is set in Washington.[8] The BPT, defenders add, is among the few levers the Legislature controls, and it reaches large off-island firms whose profits could otherwise be booked elsewhere.
Yet a lower rate on the wrong base is still the wrong base; even at 3 percent, the thin-margin grocer surrenders most of its profit. And convenience for the tax collector should never be the goal. The measure of a good tax is whether it raises what government truly needs with the least possible harm to the economy that pays it. Stability has its own cost. When the economy falters, a tax that holds the government harmless shifts the entire hardship onto households and businesses. A government that shares the lean years, tightening its own spending, helps preserve the economy it depends on. Tax that economy into the ground, and there will be nothing left to tax.
Guam should stop taxing revenue and replace the BPT with a tax on profit. Every business already calculates its profit and its income tax liability under the mirror code.[8] Guam could levy its own business tax as a set percentage of that liability, including profits that pass through to owners’ returns. The Legislature should direct the Department of Revenue and Taxation to study and recommend a rate that equals the revenue the BPT is expected to raise, with safeguards against profits shifted off-island.
North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont used this method for their income taxes as recently as 2001.[20] It carries one known risk: when Congress changes federal liability, local revenue moves with it, as Guam learned in 2018. A phase-in, beginning with new small businesses and paired with tighter government spending, would ease the transition.
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I would welcome the chance to pay taxes in the highest bracket, because it would mean my work had been blessed with abundance. My faith teaches that those who are given much are expected to look after those who cannot look after themselves: the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the sick. To me, a higher rate on those who can afford it is one way a society writes that teaching into law. It does not replace personal generosity, but it springs from the same conviction: abundance carries obligation.
Trickle-down asked too little of those with the most and promised that others would benefit. A gross receipts tax asks the most of those with the least margin to spare. A wiser tax would ask the one question the BPT never does—what truly remains?—and give a young business time to grow into a neighbor that hires, serves, and contributes in its turn.
About the Author
Samuel S. Kim is a technology executive and licensed business consultant on Guam with over twenty years of R&D leadership, including founding a 60-person research division in Seoul. He holds an economics degree from UCLA. He can be contacted at sk102[dot]co.
[End notes provided in the Kandit website version of this column.]
Kandit News Group
A Key of One’s Own
What the debate didn’t say about housing, and why GovGuam cannot procure its way out of the wait
Opinion by Samuel S. Kim for The Commons, Kandit News and Views
On Sunday evening I listened to the gubernatorial debate the way many of us did, half attentive and half hopeful, waiting for a particular word. The candidates spoke about affordability, about permits, about the cost of living that presses on every household here. But the word I was listening for never quite arrived. It was own. Not rent more cheaply, not qualify for assistance, not wait for a unit to open. Own: a key that belongs to you, to a door that will still be yours when your children are grown.
I know that word can be an ordinary expectation. When I lived and worked in Singapore, I came to understand that most of the people I passed each morning were going home, in the evening, to flats the state had built and they themselves owned. That was not luck. In 2024, nearly ninety-one per cent of Singapore’s resident households lived in homes they owned, and about three in four lived in public housing.[1] The program that made this possible began in 1964, when the state started selling its flats to the people who lived in them.[2]
Guam’s arithmetic runs the other way. A government study identified a need for 9,908 additional housing units between 2020 and 2025, for the civilian community alone.[3] The island’s housing authority manages 751 public units.[4] Meanwhile, the Navy is seeking 2,400 units from the private market for its own personnel, 1,317 of them by mid-2028.[3] Add those to a civilian shortfall that no published count has shown closing, and Guam needs roughly eleven thousand homes in about two years. A young family here is not competing with a neighbor for a home so much as with the clock. We will not close that gap by asking the old machinery to run faster.
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Here is what surprised me when I looked closely at how Singapore builds. Its housing board does not pour the concrete itself. It puts construction out to bid among private contractors, as we do. The difference is in how. Contractors must be registered, rated, and experienced before they can bid; the board spreads work so that no firm is overstretched; and bids are scored on both price and quality.[5] When two contractors collapsed mid-project in 2021, the board installed replacements in about a month, rather than the three or four months a fresh round of bidding would have taken, because the bench was already built.[6] And every government contract put out to bid is posted on a single public portal, along with who won it, for how much, and for which agency.[7]
That is procurement made fast by design and honest by default.
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Guam’s procurement law was modeled on a code that the American Bar Association approved in 1979.[8] It was written for a world of carbon copies and filing cabinets, a world in which the only way to prevent favoritism was to slow everything down until every step could be witnessed. Those rules were not foolish. They exist because public money was misused, and because the people deserved to see how their government spent. The purpose of procurement was never paperwork. It was trust.
We are now paying for that trust in time, and still not getting it. At a procurement summit last year, the general manager of the Guam Power Authority described a solar and battery project held up for two years by a protest, the formal challenge a losing bidder can file.[9] And the process hides a quieter trap: it stalls when one party simply does not act. Late last year, a bidder on the Simon Sanchez High School project filed the first of three protests with the Department of Public Works. The protest alone froze the project. With none of the three decided, the bidder appealed to the Office of Public Accountability. The hearing officer dismissed it. Guam law allows an appeal only from a protest decision, and none had been issued, so there was nothing for the office to rule on.[10] No one broke a rule. The rules let the clock stop.
Training matters. But no amount of training can shorten a process that is slow by design, or move a step that the law requires and no one is compelled to take. GovGuam cannot train its way out of this. It cannot procure its way out of a procurement problem.
So I would ask the next administration, whoever the voters choose, to return to first principles. Why did we build these rules? To prevent waste, favoritism, and secrecy. Then ask a harder question: which of those dangers can now be guarded against by tools that did not exist in 1979? A contract can be published the hour it is signed. A project can report its spending and progress every week to a page any resident can open on a phone. Sunlight that once required a clerk and a cabinet can now be automatic.
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Once the work is visible, a different kind of competition becomes possible. Let the government’s own teams, the people who already know our roads and our soil, take on the work and report openly on its cost and pace. Then invite any firm that believes it can do the same work faster or for less to bid on the next phase. Have the bids judged by someone with no stake in either, and let the better offer win.
In the nineteen-nineties, Indianapolis let city departments bid against private companies for public work, beginning with a contract to repair potholes.[11] By the former mayor’s account, the city ran about eighty such competitions; some were won by public employees, and some by private firms.[12] The point was never to punish government workers. It was to give the good ones a fair chance to prove it, and to give residents the best work their money could buy.
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Speed also depends on what we choose to build. Eleven thousand homes in two years will not come from crews pouring one house at a time. They can come from factories. Korea’s public housing corporation, LH, has been assembling apartment blocks from modules made off-site. At a 416-unit project in Sejong, each module was set in about thirty minutes, and a twenty-two-story modular tower is now rising in Uiwang.[13] The method is not yet cheaper; in 2024, LH’s chief executive put the premium at about thirty per cent, with LH aiming to match the conventional price by 2030.[13] Its advantage is time, the one thing Guam’s families no longer have. Here, such buildings would have to withstand typhoons and earthquakes, and prove it before the first module ships. And once they stand, they should be sold to the families who live in them, at subsidized prices that adjust to each household’s income, as Singapore does.[14]
If private insurers will not cover a kind of building they have never seen, that hesitation should not become the bottleneck. Hawaii once filled a gap like this. After Hurricane Iniki, most private insurers stopped covering property there, and mortgage lenders began foreclosing. In 1993 the state created its own hurricane fund, and in 2000, once private insurers had returned, the fund stopped writing new policies.[15] That is what government is for: carrying a risk the market is too cautious to take, until the market is ready to take it back.
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I am a newcomer here, and I am careful about what I presume to know. But I do know what a key means to a family. It means a child who does not change schools every year. It means grandparents who can stay close. It means the dignity of tending something that is yours.
I was raised to believe that the measure of leadership is how it treats the household with the least room, and that a promise kept quietly is worth more than one made loudly. Whoever takes the oath in January will inherit a housing shortage that does not care which party wins, and it will not arrive alone. Guam’s troubles are many, and they will not yield to old remedies in new slogans. They call for pragmatic leaders who look past the solutions we have always reached for and act on what can be done now. Begin with one building: made in a factory, built for our typhoons, its costs posted every week, and sold to the families who move in. Not in two or three years, after another study and another round of protests. Now.
I hope that person will look past the lines that divide us, sit down with the people who can actually build, and open the work to the light. The families waiting for a door of their own have been patient long enough.
About the Author
Samuel S. Kim is a technology executive with over twenty years of R&D leadership, including founding a 60-person research division in Seoul. He holds an economics degree from UCLA and lives in Guam. He can be contacted at sk102.co.
[End notes are provided in the Kandit website version of this column]
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Kandit News Group
Storm Could Develop and Reach the Marianas This Weekend
By Troy Torres, Kandit News
[Editor's note: The National Weather Service Guam office caveats all forecasts as being subject to change and to higher levels of uncertainty during the early development of storms. The information below includes early forecasts for a system that is relatively far away. NWS advises residents of the Marianas to continue monitoring information coming from NWS]
(Monday, October 12, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. ChST)--Some variation of a storm could develop and reach the Mariana Islands this weekend, according to information Monday morning from Charlie Ogle, general meteorologist with the National Weather Service Guam office.
"There is high uncertainty for intensity when it passes the Marianas this weekend," Mr. Ogle said of what is now Invest 96W, an area of investigation north of Kosrae that the Joint Typhoon Warning Center has opened and has classified as likely for development into a tropical cyclone outside of 24 hours.
"We are fairly confident it will continue to organize," Mr. Ogle said, adding that while its expected intensity is uncertain, there is more certainty that a storm resulting from its organization will reach the Mariana Islands Saturday or Sunday.
Models show a potential storm center traveling anywhere south of Guam to north of Saipan near Alamagan, he said. "The average of ensembles show it moving closer to Tinian and Saipan," he said, adding "That can change over the next several days."
As of this morning's forecast, the system can organize and move through the Mariana Islands "anywhere from a weak tropical storm to a typhoon," he said. "Conditions are definitely favorable for development."
Invest 96W is fairly stationary as of this morning, but with a slow southward movement, Mr. Ogle said. It is expected to bring heavier rains and gustier winds to Pohnpei and Kosrae later today, he added. As it organizes, it is expected to move west.
In a statement dated 9:15 p.m. last night, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported Invest 96W showing 20 to 25 kt winds (about 23 to 28 mph) along the southern periphery of the cusp along the westerly wind burst. "Environmental analysis reveals a favorable area for development," the JTWC statement reads.
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Kandit News Group
D-SNAP in the Works for Guam
By Troy Torres, Kandit News
The Leon Guerrero administration is working on the roll out of a round of Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits following President Trump's Super Typhoon Bavi-related major disaster declaration for Guam, Therese Arriola confirmed.
"Yes that's the trigger," Ms. Arriola, the director of the Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services, said about the federal rule that allows her agency to request the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Administration to fund the disaster program. "We are meeting with FNA and my SNAP program for roll-out ASAP," she wrote to Kandit.
D-SNAP provides eligible households with one month of food assistance benefits that equal the maximum amount of benefits that a household of that same size would get if it qualified for SNAP, according to USDA. SNAP is the regular federal food assistance program for more than 40,000 Guamanians whose households fall within a lower income bracket. D-SNAP primarily provides that same type of assistance to people who don't typically qualify for SNAP, and who in some way were affected by the disaster the program is opened to address, USDA guidance on its website explains.
"Households not normally eligible for SNAP may qualify for D-SNAP as a result of their disaster-related expenses, such as loss of income, damage to property, relocation expenses, and, in some cases, loss of food due to power outages," USDA guidance published to its website states.
Some households that already receive SNAP may qualify for D-SNAP, according to the federal guidance.
"When States operate a D-SNAP, ongoing SNAP clients can also receive disaster food assistance. Households with disaster losses whose SNAP benefits are less than the monthly maximum can request a supplement," the USDA memo states. "The supplement brings their benefits up to the maximum for the household size. This provides equity between DSNAP households and SNAP households receiving disaster assistance."
According to the federal memo, now that Mr. Trump has made the major disaster declaration, which includes authorization for the individual assistance program, Guam's state agency - DPHSS - can request for USDA's FNA to open a D-SNAP program.
"We are working on the plan now," Ms. Arriola said. "We will share when we have firm information."
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Kandit News Group
The Plane With Three Passengers
Guam keeps paying to fill the seats. The harder work is giving people a reason to sit in them.
Opinion by Samuel S. Kim for The Commons, Kandit News and Views
Last November, an airliner left Busan for Guam with a hundred and eighty seats and three passengers. Six airline employees made the trip as well, outnumbering the customers two to one.[1] The flight was not a scheduling error. When Korea’s antitrust regulator approved the merger of Korean Air and Asiana, it required the combined group’s carriers to keep flying Guam at ninety per cent of their 2019 capacity. The rule could guarantee the seats. It could not guarantee anyone who wanted to sit in them.
In September, five of those airlines asked to cut back to seventy per cent, citing weak demand. A commission examiner has recommended refusing them, and a final decision is pending.[1] For now, the planes will keep coming, lightly loaded, to an island whose largest private industry depends on them.[2]
On Guam, those empty seats have mostly been read as a demand problem, and the answer has been to buy more flights and run more ads. The Legislature approved ten million dollars for airline incentives and marketing.[3] The Guam Visitors Bureau advertised aboard Korean Air flights, ran cashback offers with payment companies, and backed fare discounts on the Busan route.[4] I saw the effort myself. Running on a treadmill at a gym in Korea, I looked up at the wall screen and there was Guam: turquoise water, white sand, a family laughing in the surf. Someone had worked hard on that ad, and it showed.
For a while, it worked. December, 2025, brought 95,141 visitors, the island’s best month since the pandemic.[5] Then came Super Typhoon Sinlaku in April, higher jet-fuel surcharges, and fewer seats from Korea.[6] Fares climbed, and by July arrivals had fallen thirty-seven per cent from a year earlier.[4] Shocks like these strike every destination. The ones with loyal repeat visitors recover; the ones whose demand was bought wait for the next subsidy.
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The family in what follows is a composite. Each thing that happens to them, though, has happened, or is there to be seen.
They live in Busan. The father saw the ad, and the fare was easy to like, helped along by the discounts Guam had paid for. The hotel rates were harder. Four nights in Tumon cost more than he had hoped, and he let the booking page sit open for a week. Then his wife pointed out that their children had never seen water that color. They booked.
The air, when they land, is warm and soft, exactly as advertised. The ride to the hotel is less so. The road from the airport is patched and uneven. Lane lines have faded to suggestions. The grass on the medians has been mowed, but weeds grow untouched from the cracks, and the curb paint has nearly worn away. Near the end of the ride, the van passes the empty shell of the Verona Resort.[7] The children, looking out the window, are quiet.
The next morning, Guam keeps its promise. Tumon Bay is clear and calm, and the children do not want to leave the water. If the trip were only the beach, there would be nothing to write about.
At midday, they walk San Vitores Road looking for lunch. Many storefronts are shuttered, and when they look up, the paint on the upper floors is peeling. The signs over the doorways come in every size and style, as if no one ever agreed on what the street should look like. Up the road, a tall resort stands dark. It is the Pacific Star, 436 rooms, closed since its owner went bankrupt; a buyer has promised a renovation but named no reopening date.[8] Farther along, DFS Galleria, the duty-free emporium that anchored Tumon for fifty-five years, has been closed since the end of March. Tumon Sands Plaza, which once housed twenty-one designer boutiques, has emptied out.[9] In Busan, the mother says, buildings like these would be assumed abandoned.
On the second day, they want to see the waterfalls and quiet villages of the south. The red shuttle serves Tumon, the malls, and a few sights nearby, and when it is full it passes the stop.[10] Beyond that, Guam has little public transportation.[2] So the father rents a car. Without clear lane markings, and among drivers who do not always signal their intentions, he grips the wheel more than he enjoys the view. His wife has read that, in February, a Korean family with an infant was robbed at gunpoint, in daylight, outside a mall in Tamuning.[11] After dark, they stay on the well-lit blocks near the hotel.
Dinner is the last surprise. The father converts the bill to won twice, to be sure. The designer shopping that once drew Asian travelers to Guam has largely gone, so on the last afternoon they browse the discount racks instead.
At the airport, a young woman with a tablet asks whether they are likely to come back to Guam. The father says yes. The beach was beautiful, the people at the hotel were kind, and he is a polite man. On the flight home, he and his wife start talking about Fukuoka. It is less than an hour from Busan, the yen is weak, and Korean travelers are economizing almost everywhere except Japan.[12] Last year, 9.46 million Koreans visited Japan, nearly seventy per cent more than before the pandemic.[13]
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That polite yes is in the bureau’s numbers. When it surveyed departing visitors in 2025, ninety-four per cent of Koreans and Japanese said they were likely to come back.[14] Yet the same survey recorded their chief complaints, road conditions and transportation, and that May, arrivals were still fifty-seven and a half per cent below 2019.[14]
The two facts fit together once a pleasant goodbye is no longer mistaken for a promise. People leave fond of Guam’s beaches and its genuinely warm people, and then, the next time they have four days and a budget, they choose Fukuoka. Close to forty per cent of Korean visitors in 2019 had been to Guam before.[15] That loyalty was the island’s real inheritance, and it is being spent down.
The bureau has not been idle. It revived a Sunday night market in Tumon that visitors and residents both enjoy,[16] and it pushed for the property law described below. Its board’s draft recovery plan even lists “product decline” among the industry’s four key challenges.[17] The problem has been named. It has not been funded. The bureau’s 2027 budget request puts about forty-four per cent into marketing and about twenty-eight per cent into everything visitors touch on the ground: beautification, cultural events, and safety.[18] And the bureau does not pave roads, police Tumon, or regulate signs. No single agency can fix this alone.
Guam has, in fact, written this warning into law before. In the nineteen-nineties, the Legislature declared that Tumon had to be revitalized because rival destinations were outmarketing the island.[19] Three decades later, the rivals are still winning.
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The tools to change this are closer than they look. In June, at the bureau board’s request, the governor signed a law applying the International Property Maintenance Code to Tumon’s hotel zone. It takes effect next June.[20] A 2022 law already lets Public Works fine the owners of unsafe abandoned buildings five thousand dollars and set deadlines to repair or demolish them.[21] The same draft recovery plan priced immediate island-wide destination improvements at fourteen million dollars or more, four million more than the island found for airline incentives and marketing.[17]
The signs along San Vitores Road could follow a standard, too. Some municipalities require approval before a new sign or façade goes up in a commercial district. In Brookline, Massachusetts, the design must follow the town’s guidelines and pass review by its Planning Board.[22] Others require the old sign to come down when a business leaves; in Breckenridge, Colorado, it must be removed within fourteen days.[23] A shuttered storefront with its old sign still hanging announces decline. A clean, freshly painted empty space suggests that someone expects the next tenant. Tumon could adopt a standard of its own, drafted with the shopkeepers who must meet it.
What is missing is the sequence. Next June, a Public Works inspector could walk San Vitores Road with the new code in one hand and, in the other, a public list of derelict buildings, the Verona near the top. Behind that inspector would stand a Legislature that funds the road from the airport as faithfully as it funds the seats. And the bureau could measure not only how many visitors arrive but how many return. An island cannot close the gap between “I’ll be back” and the booking that never comes if it cannot see that gap.
Many of us were raised to believe that hospitality begins before the guest knocks: with the swept floor, the fresh linen, the table set with care. It is love made practical. Guam’s visitors already find warmth in its people, at the hotel desk and on the beach. What they need now is to find it in the place itself. That will take landowners, hoteliers, restaurateurs, and residents deciding that the street outside belongs to them, too.
A regulator in Seoul can keep the seats on the plane. Only Guam can give people a reason to sit in them.
About the Author
Samuel S. Kim is a technology executive and licensed business consultant on Guam with over twenty years of R&D leadership, including founding a 60-person research division in Seoul. He holds an economics degree from UCLA. He can be contacted at sk102[dot]co. More of his writing is at sk102[dot]co/insights.
[Endnotes are provided in the Kandit website version of this column]
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Week of Violence and Sexual Violence Against Family Members
Seven cases involving violent crimes were charged the past week in Guam, and six of them involved victims who were family members of the alleged assailants. Kandit did not include one of these cases in this report, and will present that story separately.
Felony Sexual Conduct and Strangulation Charges Filed
In a case filed on October 5, 2026, Jesse Quidachay Sudo, 60, was charged with first-degree felony counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and attempted second-degree criminal sexual conduct. According to court documents, a teenage minor filed a walk-in complaint with the Guam Police Department on October 4, 2026. She reported that Sudo, a relative known to her, assaulted her in a bedroom earlier that evening. Authorities noted that Sudo allegedly admitted to touching the minor's "private area" while claiming he was reaching for his phone, later telling police he was sorry.
Brandon Leonelle Tano, 45, faces third-degree felony strangulation alongside misdemeanor charges of assault, family violence, and unlawful restraint. GPD officers responded to an apartment complex in Dededo on October 4, 2026, after a witness reported that a woman had been severely injured. The victim suffered a golf-ball-sized hematoma and a two-inch laceration on her forehead after Tano allegedly headbutted her during an argument that lasted most of the day. She also reported being slapped, choked, and repeatedly restrained from leaving a bedroom. Tano was apprehended by police the following day at Camp Blaz.
Weapon-Related Assaults and Family Violence
In Mongmong, Toytoy Kuss, 27, was arrested early Monday morning on October 5, 2026, following a violent altercation at an apartment complex. Kuss faces a third-degree felony charge of aggravated assault and a misdemeanor assault charge. According to the police affidavit, Kuss arrived at the complex in a rental vehicle, confronted another tenant, and chased him upstairs. Kuss then retrieved a black baseball bat from his apartment and struck the victim twice in the left arm, causing a one-inch laceration and severe swelling. Police later located Kuss and a relative at a nearby market, where the relative surrendered the bat used in the assault.
In a separate weapon-related incident, Terry Reyes Lane, 48, was charged with misdemeanor family violence following a dispute on October 3, 2026. An elderly woman related to Lane reported to police that he became enraged during an argument, overturned a bench, and pointed a weapon at her. Although initially described as a carbine rifle, police later confirmed and confiscated the weapon as a .22 caliber pellet gun. Lane fled the scene but was apprehended by court marshals and GPD officers on October 5, 2026, on outstanding bench warrants. Lane admitted to the argument but denied pointing the pellet gun at the woman.
Alcohol-Fueled Disturbance and Property Damage
Additional family violence charges were filed in two other separate incidents:
Rubyn Jay Cruz was charged with misdemeanor assault and family violence following an early morning disturbance in Tumon on October 3, 2026. The magistrate's report in the case states that a heavily intoxicated Cruz was picked up by family members outside a bar. When a female relative approached him, Cruz allegedly threw her to the ground, threatened to kill her, and punched her in the face three times with a closed fist. Responding officers noted sustained facial redness and dried blood on the victim.
Josiah James Anderson was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief and family violence on October 7, 2026, after a dispute at a home in Dededo. Court documents indicate that after being confronted about child support obligations, Anderson became irate, smashed a table and a cabinet, and threw the broken pieces of wood at the homeowner. He then punched several walls before fleeing the scene. Anderson later admitted to damaging the furniture but claimed the homeowner had slapped him.
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All people accused of crimes are presumed innocent in our criminal justice system until proven guilty in a court of law.
Editor’s Note: This article was compiled and generated using artificial intelligence assistance based on official public court records from the Superior Court of Guam. It was reviewed and formatted for publication by Kandit News staff.
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Twelve-year-old Kailey Camarin Naputi Mendiola's mother, Karmalin Mendiola Halili has asked Kandit to share the GoFundMe fundraiser that their family has started to raise money so they can pay for Kailey's funeral.
Here is the link to the fundraiser: gofund.me/8d3ca7ab1
The following is the message shared on the GoFundMe page by Ms. Halili's sister, Joy Haith:
It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share that, on October 6, 2026, our Heavenly Father called our Goddaughter, Kailey Camarin Naputi Mendiola, home to rest.
Our family received news no parent or family could ever be prepared for. Our sister tragically lost her baby girl at only 12 years old. Kailey was a beautiful young soul with so much life ahead of her, taken from us far too soon.
We could write so much about Kailey, but there will never be enough words to truly capture who she was unless you had the privilege of knowing her. She was a bright young girl who loved wholeheartedly, cared deeply, and had a contagious laugh that could fill a room. She spoke her truth and was never afraid to stand out from the crowd.
Kailey resembled her mother in so many ways. Whenever she poured her heart and mind into something, she gave it her all. She showed resilience when she fell or felt like giving up, and she found so much joy in the little things—especially crocheting and drawing.
Kailey had her whole life ahead of her. She was deciding whether she would join track this school year, wondering what she would crochet next, and keeping up with whichever squishy toy was trending so she could bug her mom with videos explaining exactly why she needed to buy it.
These are the moments, the laughter, and the pieces of Kailey that our family will carry with us forever.
As we navigate this unimaginable loss, we are asking, on behalf of our family, for any contribution, no matter the amount, to help with funeral and memorial expenses as her parents take this time to grieve and prepare to lay their baby girl to rest.
If you are unable to donate, sharing this fundraiser and keeping Kailey and our family in your thoughts and prayers would mean just as much to us.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your love, kindness, prayers, and support during this incredibly difficult time.
Kailey Camarin, you will forever be loved and never forgotten.
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Supporting Guam's Veterans through Action
"[R]espect for military service is demonstrated not only in what we say, but in how we care for those who served and the families who stood beside them." - Chargualaf
Opinion by Anthony "Tony" P. Chargualaf, Jr. for Kandit News and Views
Last week, I Liheslaturan Guåhan took up Bill 343-38, introduced by Senator Therese Terlaje and co-sponsored by Senator Sabina Perez, continuing their work on behalf of Guam’s veterans and military families. The bill provides greater clarity on who qualifies as a spouse or legal guardian for certain benefits available to veterans and their families. These include waivers of driver’s license fees, waivers of annual vehicle registration fees available to qualifying disabled veterans, and government employment preferences that may extend to eligible spouses, surviving spouses, and legal guardians. By clarifying who qualifies and for how long, Bill 343 seeks to ensure these benefits reach the family members and caregivers they were intended to support.
As a veteran of the Guam Air National Guard and Mayor of Inalåhan, I welcome this continued attention to the needs of our veterans and their families. Senators Terlaje and Perez have demonstrated through their legislative work a willingness to turn that commitment into action.
Together, they introduced Resolution 204-38, calling on the federal government to transfer approximately 15 acres of federal property to the Government of Guam and preserve the land for the future expansion of the Guam Veterans Cemetery and the neighboring Masso Reservoir Conservation Area and Watershed. Planning now for the future needs of our veterans cemetery is a practical responsibility we owe to generations of veterans and their families.
This work is not new. During the 34th Guam Legislature, Senator Terlaje authored a series of laws aimed at finding veterans who may not be connected to the services available to them. Public Law 34-86 strengthened efforts to update the Guam Veterans Registry so Veterans Affairs could better identify and reach Guam’s veteran population. Public Law 34-93 required the Department of Revenue and Taxation to forward veterans’ DD-214 forms or other proof of veteran status collected through driver’s licenses and identification cards to Veterans Affairs to keep that registry current. Public Law 34-130 brought those efforts directly into our villages, authorizing mayors to collect veteran information through residency forms and the annual census to help identify veterans and connect them with available services.
During the last legislative term, Senator Terlaje was an author of Public Law 37-76, which appropriated $50,000 to the Guam Office of Veterans Affairs to support an island-wide Veterans Convention intended to connect Guam’s veterans with services, information, and resources.These efforts have also been co-sponsored and supported by other Democratic senators, demonstrating our party’s commitment to supporting Guam’s veterans and their families.
These are tangible actions. They concern whether veterans are identified and connected with services, whether veterans and their families can access benefits, and whether Guam is planning today for the long-term needs of those who served.
There is still much more work ahead. Our veterans deserve better access to health care, stronger assistance navigating federal benefits, support for their families, and persistent advocacy in Washington for services that too often remain difficult to access from Guam.
As a veteran myself, I believe respect for military service is demonstrated not only in what we say, but in how we care for those who served and the families who stood beside them. That responsibility belongs to all of us—veterans and civilians, Democrats and Republicans, and every person entrusted with public office. The record of Therese Terlaje and Sabina Perez reflects a commitment to that responsibility through action.
Our veterans have done their duty for us. We must continue doing ours for them.
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Anthony “Tony” P. Chargualaf, Jr. is the chairman of the Democratic Party of Guam. He is the mayor of Inalahan, and a Guam Air National Guard veteran.
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String of Property Crimes Charged
The Office of the Attorney General of Guam has filed criminal charges against four people following a string of separate property crimes involving vehicle damage, burglary, and theft.
High-Speed Chase Leads to Stolen Vehicle Arrest
Peter Joel Meno Petros Jr. faces a second-degree felony charge of Theft by Receiving, alongside misdemeanor charges of Eluding a Police Officer, Resisting Arrest, and Reckless Driving. According to court documents, Guam Police Department officers responded to a commercial jobsite at Camp Blaz on October 5, 2026, after a burglary was reported and three company trucks were discovered missing. Later that day, police spotted one of the missing vehicles—a 2015 Toyota Tacoma—leaving a McDonald’s parking lot in Yigo. When officers attempted to pull the truck over, Petros allegedly accelerated, fishtailed, and made abrupt, wide turns that nearly caused collisions with other motorists. After police successfully stopped the vehicle, Petros fled on foot and actively resisted restraint before being taken into custody, according to the report. Questioned by police after he reportedly waived his right to silence, Petros said he received the vehicle from two people named Daryll and Ken.
Woman Charged with Wrecking Cars with Golf Club
Jovina Mercado was charged with two counts of third-degree felony Criminal Mischief to a Motor Vehicle following an October 4, 2026, incident at a Mangilao residence. GPD officers arrived at the scene to find Mercado sitting on a tire with a golf club at her feet. She had allegedly smashed the windshield and passenger window of a 2015 Hyundai Accent, as well as the rear window of a 1989 Nissan pickup truck, causing more than $500 in damage to each vehicle. Authorities noted that Mercado, who made several erratic statements to officers, admitted to damaging the vehicles after becoming upset that she could not borrow one. Mercado committed the alleged offenses while out on felony release for a pending charge.
Yigo Yard Burglary Resolved by Neighbor
Felix Anthony Chargualaf faces charges of third-degree felony Theft and misdemeanor Criminal Trespass following an appliance theft on Chalan Ma Anao Road in Yigo. On October 2, 2026, an $800 pressure washer, two solar lights, and two floodlights were stolen from underneath a residential tin canopy. The property owner was later contacted by a neighbor who spotted Chargualaf in possession of the items at a home on Chalan Mataguac. The stolen items were successfully recovered, and Chargualaf later confessed to GPD officers that he had taken the tools after spotting them under the victim's awning, according to the magistrate's complaint in the case.
Vehicle Window Shattered in Anger
Jackson Kena has been charged with third-degree felony Criminal Mischief to a Motor Vehicle following a domestic disturbance in Yigo on October 6, 2026. GPD officers responded to a residence where they observed a white 2000 Subaru GL van belonging to "Mary's Maids" with a shattered front passenger window. Kena allegedly became angry while sitting in the passenger seat and punched the window out of frustration. Kena surrendered to officers at the home, apologized, and admitted to police that he lost his temper and knew what he did was wrong, according to the magistrate's report in the case.
_____
All people accused of crimes are presumed innocent in our criminal justice system until proven guilty in a court of law.
Editor’s Note: This article was compiled and generated using artificial intelligence assistance based on official public court records from the Superior Court of Guam. It was reviewed and formatted for publication by Kandit News staff.
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Seaport 'Recovering Quickly' from Weekend Crisis, Gantry 6 Nears Operation
(Port Authority of Guam news release)--The Port Authority of Guam continues to maintain cargo operations while making further progress in the recovery of its gantry cranes, with Gantry Crane 4 operational and Gantry Crane 6 advancing toward its next major recovery milestone.
Assessments completed so far indicate Gantry 6 is safe to proceed with lowering its boom. If no additional discrepancies are identified during gantry startup, the crane could be ready to boom down as early as this afternoon. Gantry 5 also remains under repair, inspection, and technical assessment. Both Gantries 5 and 6 are back on the rail system.
“We had a serious incident, but we are recovering quickly,” said Port General Manager Rory J. Respicio. “Cargo operations never stopped, we have contingency capacity available if needed, and the remaining cranes are progressing toward service.”
The Port continues to operate with Gantry 4 while coordinating vessel activity with its shipping partners. The Matson Islander was serviced as scheduled, and Lurline operations proceeded as planned. APL remains in the same vessel lineup and is expected tomorrow morning, but is waiting for berth availability because both vessels cannot be accommodated on the wharf at the same time.
There has been some schedule movement as the Port operates with only one gantry crane. Such timing adjustments are not unusual during a recovery period involving major equipment. The vessel lineup has remained in place, cargo operations have continued, and the Port is working directly with the carriers to minimize operational impacts.
“We are not minimizing the impact,” Respicio said. “Operating with one gantry crane has caused some schedule movement, and we are acknowledging that. At the same time, the same vessel lineup has been maintained, cargo continues moving through the Port, and we are making measurable progress toward restoring additional crane capacity.”
From Monday, through 4:00 p.m. today, October 7, 2026, the Port discharged 504 units of cargo, including 283 containers and 221 pieces of break-bulk cargo, and released 116 units into the community. Container discharges included 205 full imports and 78 transshipments, while break-bulk cargo included 210 automobiles and 11 pieces of heavy equipment. Of the cargo released, 63 were containers and 53 were break-bulk units, including 52 automobiles and one piece of heavy equipment. The figures demonstrate that cargo has continued moving through the Port throughout the recovery effort despite operating with reduced gantry crane capacity.
The Port has also completed an emergency procurement to secure temporary crane capacity, which Governor Lou Leon Guerrero authorized immediately. The procurement ensures that a temporary crane is available for deployment if needed, but the Port will not incur deployment costs unless that option is activated. At this time, deployment is not necessary because Gantry 4 is operational and, at the carrier’s request, the Port is continuing operations without bringing in the temporary crane. The temporary crane remains available should operational conditions change.
At the same time, the Port has initiated a formal review of the October 2 incident involving the three gantry cranes. Gantry 6 was locked in position and secured based on the guidance and procedures in place at the time. Guam was not under a tropical storm or typhoon watch or warning, so the Port was not operating under the same full heavy weather posture that would normally accompany a typhoon threat.
The review is examining the securing procedures and customary practices in place, the timing and substance of instructions concerning barriers or other additional securing measures, how those instructions were communicated and carried out, and whether any deviations from those instructions, if any, were authorized.
The review is also looking at the weather information available throughout the day and evening, decisions made at the supervisory, operational, safety, and management levels, and whether established procedures and specific management directions were followed.
The Port will continue providing updates as recovery work progresses and additional information becomes available.
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The Tax That Never Asks
"Money handed to those who already have plenty does not reliably become new jobs." - Kim
"Guam should stop taxing revenue and replace the BPT with a tax on profit. ... The Legislature should direct the Department of Revenue and Taxation to study and recommend a rate that equals the revenue the BPT is expected to raise, with safeguards against profits shifted off-island." - Kim
Opinion by Samuel S. Kim for The Commons, Kandit News and Views
In late 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s budget director said something in a magazine interview that nearly cost him his job. The administration’s new tax cut, David Stockman told a reporter, was “always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.”[1]
The idea inside that horse was older than the horse. Before anyone called it “trickle-down,” economists called it the horse-and-sparrow theory: feed the horse enough oats, and some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. Cut taxes for those at the top, and they will invest, build, and hire, and the benefits will reach everyone else. Reagan sold his cut to Congress as a broad measure that would unleash growth, and over his presidency the top income tax rate fell from 70 percent to 28 percent.[2]
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The retreat began almost immediately. As deficits swelled, Reagan signed a 1982 law scaling back much of the cut, followed by more revenue-raising laws in 1984 and 1987.[3] To be fair, Reagan insisted the 1982 law was not a reversal of his philosophy.[4] But the cuts had not paid for themselves, and the bill came due.
Kansas ran the experiment again in 2012, cutting taxes sharply and promising a surge. Growth trailed the national average every year the cuts lasted, revenue fell short, and in 2017 a Republican legislature repealed most of them over the governor’s veto.[5] Across 18 wealthy nations and fifty years of major tax cuts for the rich, researchers at the London School of Economics and King’s College London found that inequality rose while growth and unemployment showed no significant change.[6] Princeton economist Owen Zidar found that job growth after U.S. tax cuts came largely from relief for lower- and middle-income households, with little from cuts for the top 10 percent.[7]
The sparrows, it turns out, mostly go hungry. Money handed to those who already have plenty does not reliably become new jobs.
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Guam’s Business Privilege Tax is another story altogether, and in one sense the mirror image of trickle-down: a tax that asks the most of those with the least to spare.
To many residents, the BPT sounds like just another tax. It is not. Businesses on Guam already pay an income tax that mirrors the federal code, levied on profit: what remains after wages, rent, inventory, and equipment are paid.[8] The BPT is levied on gross receipts, every dollar that comes through the door. It never asks whether the business made money.[9] On October 1, the general rate fell to 4 percent, unwinding a 5 percent rate adopted in 2018 to replace revenue Guam lost when the 2017 federal tax cut, mirrored into local law, lowered income taxes on the island.[10]
That difference decides what an owner is rewarded for doing.
Under a profit-based tax, reinvestment lowers the bill. A new worker’s wage is deductible. A faster oven, a second delivery truck, or better software is written off over time. Each becomes an asset that lets the business do more with less. When Congress let firms deduct equipment faster, a study of more than 120,000 firms found eligible investment rose 10 to 17 percent, with small firms responding most.[11]
The BPT notices none of it. The new worker’s wages reduce nothing. The new oven reduces nothing. If the investment pays off and sales grow, the tax grows with them.
For a struggling business, the effect can be decisive. In a Tax Foundation illustration, a 1 percent gross receipts tax consumes 20 percent of the profit of a grocer earning a 5 percent margin.[12] By the same arithmetic, a 4 percent BPT equals 80 percent of the grocer’s profit; even the reduced 3 percent rate most small businesses pay takes 60 percent.[13] A business that broke even, or lost money, still owes the full amount.
For an owner at the kitchen table after a hard year, weighing whether to sign another lease, the BPT can be the weight that tips the scale toward closing.
New businesses feel this most. Nationally, roughly one in five new establishments closes within its first year.[14] Under a profit-based tax, a young business owes no income tax until it turns a profit, and its early losses can be carried forward to offset future profits.[15] That breathing room lets a business take root before it is asked to carry its full share. Under the BPT, once a business clears a small exemption, the tax is due on every sale, profitable or not.[13]
The same logic reaches every building on the island. Rent is subject to the BPT, so a landlord pays on every dollar of it.[9] Guam’s income tax lets an owner deduct routine repairs such as fresh paint, a patched roof, or a fixed railing, so the government shares part of the cost of keeping a building sound.[16] The BPT, levied alongside it, shares none. A gallon of paint reduces nothing. The owner who stops at the code minimum and the owner who paints, repairs, and adds years to the building’s life owe the same BPT on the same rent.
Guam can see the result. Lawmakers have put the problem in writing: neglect, one bill found, has left many unsafe structures that blight the island’s landscape.[17] At the far end of that neglect stand buildings like the long-abandoned Verona Resort, visible from Marine Corps Drive as lawmakers weigh maintenance standards for Tumon.[18] No tax alone explains a weathered building; salt air and typhoons are hard on concrete and steel. But a tax system should reward upkeep, not ignore it.
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The BPT has serious defenders, and they have a point. Gross receipts taxes, they note, are simple to administer and steadier than profit-based taxes, which fall sharply in a recession.[19] The governor’s office adds that about 90 percent of businesses already pay a reduced 3 percent rate, and that most full-rate payers are large international firms tied to the military buildup.[13] Guam also cannot freely rewrite its income tax; the mirror code is set in Washington.[8] The BPT, defenders add, is among the few levers the Legislature controls, and it reaches large off-island firms whose profits could otherwise be booked elsewhere.
Yet a lower rate on the wrong base is still the wrong base; even at 3 percent, the thin-margin grocer surrenders most of its profit. And convenience for the tax collector should never be the goal. The measure of a good tax is whether it raises what government truly needs with the least possible harm to the economy that pays it. Stability has its own cost. When the economy falters, a tax that holds the government harmless shifts the entire hardship onto households and businesses. A government that shares the lean years, tightening its own spending, helps preserve the economy it depends on. Tax that economy into the ground, and there will be nothing left to tax.
Guam should stop taxing revenue and replace the BPT with a tax on profit. Every business already calculates its profit and its income tax liability under the mirror code.[8] Guam could levy its own business tax as a set percentage of that liability, including profits that pass through to owners’ returns. The Legislature should direct the Department of Revenue and Taxation to study and recommend a rate that equals the revenue the BPT is expected to raise, with safeguards against profits shifted off-island.
North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont used this method for their income taxes as recently as 2001.[20] It carries one known risk: when Congress changes federal liability, local revenue moves with it, as Guam learned in 2018. A phase-in, beginning with new small businesses and paired with tighter government spending, would ease the transition.
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I would welcome the chance to pay taxes in the highest bracket, because it would mean my work had been blessed with abundance. My faith teaches that those who are given much are expected to look after those who cannot look after themselves: the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the sick. To me, a higher rate on those who can afford it is one way a society writes that teaching into law. It does not replace personal generosity, but it springs from the same conviction: abundance carries obligation.
Trickle-down asked too little of those with the most and promised that others would benefit. A gross receipts tax asks the most of those with the least margin to spare. A wiser tax would ask the one question the BPT never does—what truly remains?—and give a young business time to grow into a neighbor that hires, serves, and contributes in its turn.
About the Author
Samuel S. Kim is a technology executive and licensed business consultant on Guam with over twenty years of R&D leadership, including founding a 60-person research division in Seoul. He holds an economics degree from UCLA. He can be contacted at sk102[dot]co.
[End notes provided in the Kandit website version of this column.]
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