Budget stalled due to lack of quorum

CEBU, Philippines - The P9.8-billion revised 2016 Annual Budget of Cebu City will be stalled further after the City Council failed to reach a quorum during the budget hearing yesterday.

It was the third time that City Councilor Margarita Osmeña, committee on budget and finance head, cancelled the budget hearing for lack of members who attended.

“Well, they didn’t show up,” she said, adding that it was “useless” to call for another budget hearing when everyone is busy campaigning.

“We could…be campaigning but we (supposedly) have to do our duties,” she lamented.

Osmeña said Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan-allied councilors did their part by attending the budget hearing.

The budget include the P40-million election reserve, which contains P4 million for the honoraria of at least 3,000 teachers who will serve as members of the Board of Election Inspectors during the May 9 national and local elections.

It also has P88 million intended as mid-year bonus and supposedly given to City Hall employees in May. This is the first time that the city gives city employees a 14th-month pay.

Also, Osmeña said she has urged the city’s executive department to submit important documents that would explain the proposed revised budget.

(City Treasurer Diwa Cuevas was out-of-town attending a seminar and could not be reached for comment.)

Osmeña said she had been asking Cuevas to submit a request so she (Osmeña) could draft a resolution for the budget for the honoraria of the BEIs.

During the budget hearing yesterday afternoon, only city councilors Osmeña, Sisinio Andales, Alvin Arcilla, Nida Cabrera, Alvin Dizon, Lea Japson and Roberto Cabarrubias were present. All are BOPK members.

At 2:40 p.m., Osmeña declared that the budget hearing will be cancelled and told City Budget Officer Marietta Gumia that they would cancel all budget hearings for now because calling for one was “useless.”

At 2:45, City Councilor Noel Eleuterio Wenceslao of Team Rama arrived, followed by Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella five minutes after.

Labella said several residents were in his office asking for assistance, which was why he was late.

Osmeña told Labella that she would just submit a resolution during their regular session on May 4 for a formal correspondence asking the city’s Local Finance Committee to submit essential documents.

“We will wait for those documents to be submitted by the Local Finance Committee; and the committee on budget and finance, as a committee, will look at it (revised budget). We will just call for a budget hearing nalang once needed,” Osmeña told the vice mayor, who acceded.

One of the documents that Osmeña asked from the LFC was a list of Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE) that were made part of the 2015 reenacted budget.

The city had to come up with a new and revised budget after he Department of Budget and Management declared the 2016 annual budget it approved last year as “inoperative” for failing to provide an allocation for the city's contractual obligation for the payment of the South Road Properties loan.

Osmeña said her committee wanted to know what items the executive department considers as essential.

“Out of the P5 billion reenacted budget, almost P3.4 (billin) is MOOE for both General Fund and (the) Special (Fund). We want to know what is in there because (what) they told us (was) what’s not there,” she said.

“Because 2015 (reenacted budget) is what we are using now. We want to know what they considered as essential because that is the budget that is actually we are using now, implementing now. We want to be apprised of the MOOE” she added.

Other documents Osmeña requested were the demand letter from the Land Bank of the Philippines for the city to pay off the SRP loan, 2016 Gender and Development Plan, medium-rise building plan, 2016 peace and order plan, the letter as basis for the supply for day care workers, the letter as basis for other supplies and materials for senior citizens, the guidelines of the proposed P170-million educational assistance program, and the Colon Street revitalization project.  (FREEMAN)