PASSAGE OF DAGUPAN 2023 BUDGET DELAYED AGAIN

THE members of the majority-opposition did not only make good on its assurance that the committee on finance, budget and appropriations that submit its report on the 2024 annual city budget to the plenary session on March 12 but worse, they decided to boycott the regular session.

Councilors Redford Erfe-Mejia, Alfie Fernandez, Alvin Coquia, Marilou Fernandez, Librada Reyna-Macalanda, Celia Lim and her daughter Irene Lim-Acosta simultaneously filed their respective privileged ordinary leaves.

City Secretary Ravanzo initially told the session that he did not receive any application for leave from any of the councilors who did not respond to the roll call, but as he was about to conduct a second roll call, application forms for leave were sent to the SP secretariat past 11:20 a.m. with incomplete data and without signature of the vice mayor..

Present were Councilors Jeslito Seen, Dennis Canto, Bradley Benavides, president of the Sangguniang Kabataan Federation and Liga ng mga Barangay president Marcelino Fernandez (who participated through the Zoom platform) and Minority Floor Leader Michael Fernandez.

In exasperation over the sudden simultaneous leaves filed by all the majority councilors on the day the annual budget was expected to be debated and passed, Vice Mayor and Presiding Officer Bryan Kua directed the city secretary to mark them all absent since their leaves did not have his approval.

Minority Leader Fernandez clarified that a ‘privileged’ leave can be availed of only if a councilor is celebrating his/her birthday, wedding anniversary and observing a personal milestone.

He said the majority-opposition’s clear intent to further delay passage of the P3.1 billion annual budget after nine weeks is meant to further sabotage implementation of social and economic programs of the city government by at least another two weeks.

Earlier, Councilors Seen and Benavides expressed hope that the majority would no longer have reason to cut the annual budget because the official lists of job order employees and of city scholars as the majority required were already submitted by the Human Resources Office and the Mayor’s Office respectively, to the Sanggunian.

Recall that the reported non-submission of the same lists to the majority councilors in 2022 was used as their reason for  passing a P864.9 million annual budget, from P1.3 billion, to operate the city government like a third class municipality. It forced the city government to operate with 2022 reenacted budget after the DBM declared the majority‘s version as “inoperative in its entirety”.

The majority also attempted to declare the passage of the 2023 annual budget as invalid by seeking a Temporary Restraining Order from the court but was denied.  (Leonardo Micua)

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