Mayor Belen turns the table on majority dads
FOR PLAYING POLITICS
“ENOUGH is enough!”
This was the clear retort of Dagupan City Mayor Belen Fernandez to the latest demand of the seven councilors in the majority as a pre-condition for the passage of the 2023 annual budget when she attended the March 21 Dagupan Sangguniang Panglungsod’s committee on finance, budget and appropriations hearing on the budget.
After her unprecedented presence at the March 14 committee hearing, the committee members led by, Councilor Redford Erfe-Mejia, demanded that she submits the list of consultants and job-order employees of the city government, a demand that has no precedence in the process of passing the annual budget.
Mayor Fernandez told the councilors in the majority, that their latest demand was out of bounds, and is not among the conditions specified in the Local Government Code and guidelines of the Department of Budget and Management for the passage of the budget, and therefore irrelevant. She also pointed out to the committee that she already furnished the committee the number of consultants and JOEs and those should suffice.
Mayor Fernandez then promptly turned the tables on the majority councilors when she reminded them that they did not turn over vital documents when they left the city government, among these the list of scholars, their addresses, phone numbers and schools where they were enrolled in; records of issued tricycle franchises, records of collections on traffic violations, records of disbursement of P54 million worth of meals, records of purchased CCTVs, records of medicines purchased and in stock; records of two missing motorboats and records of missing computer tablets.
Because of incomplete or missing documents turned by the past city administration, Fernandez already requested the regional office of the COA to help ascertain transactions of the past administration and as a result, some officials of the Lim administration are now receiving notices of disallowance based on its Audit Observation Memorandum (AOM).
And in her Facebook post, the mayor accused Councilor Erfe-Mejia, the official representative of the past city administration in turning over documents of the past administration to the new administration, and his fellow majority councilors of playing politics by holding the 2023 annual budget hostage.
Fernandez said the annual budget was submitted to the Sanggunian in October 2022 but it was only in January this year when the committee of Erfe-Mejia started its weekly hearings while employing irregular process in inviting department heads.
She maintained that the submission of the list of consultants and JOE list was never demanded by past finance, budget and appropriations committees saying she knows this because she too was vice mayor and SP presiding officer for six years.
Fernandez then challenged the councilors to pass the annual budget first then she will show them the list of consultants and JOEs as demanded, and they can conduct their own investigation and file cases in court if warranted. (Leonardo Micua)
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