Mayor’s gag order delays budget OK
IT’S déjà vu for Dagupan City’s budget review.
Just as in the case of the 2011 budget that suffered a delay in approval, the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) is again facing a slowdown in its review of the proposed budget for next year due to the order of Mayor Benjamin Lim prohibiting department heads of the city hall to appear before the council without his approval.
Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, chair of the SP, said the approval of the P581 million budget for 2012, submitted by city hall on October 5, could again be delayed if Lim continues to prevent department heads from attending their sessions to clarify items in the proposed budget.
“The councilors need to ask them what they intend to do with their proposed budget and how they spent their previous budgets,” said Fernandez, adding, “That is why their attendance during the session and the budget hearings is so vital and if they will not attend, this will have a serious telling effect on the approval of budget.”
Members of the majority in the city council already held a caucus to discuss the procedures for reviewing the proposed budget for next year.
NO SHOW
Last October 17, four department heads invited by the council for clarification on a Commission on Audit (COA) report did not appear ostensibly after Lim issued on October 4 a memorandum reminding city hall officers that all invitations from the SP for committee and public hearings must first be coursed through the mayor’s office and subject to his approval.
The SP’s acting secretary, Rizalino Uzon, confirmed that all invitations to department heads were and are being coursed through the mayor’s office.
Those who did not show up at the Oct. 17 SP session were City Administrator Vladimir Mata, also officer-in-charge of the City Planning and Development Office; City Treasurer Romelita Alcantara; Allan Dale Zarate, OIC of the City Assessor’s Office; and Engr. Romeo Rosario, chairman of the Task Force on Inventory.
The four officers were invited to explain items on the annual report submitted to the city by COA, specifically the various properties amounting to P88.5 million used as school sites, markets, roads-right-of way, housing resettlements, dumpsites, and diversion roads, among others, which were not yet transferred in the name of the Dagupan City government.
Mata and City Tourism Officer Rose Teng-Mejia were also a no-show earlier when the SP invited them to shed light on the controversial “Daongan Ed Dawel” project, that was already completed without the required prior bidding as admitted by Lim himself.
Another official who snubbed an SP invitation was City Engineer Virginia Rosario who was supposed to shed light on various infrastructure projects of the city government, including the drainage problems that compounded the floods in Dagupan following recent typhoons.
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