This has reference to Neal Cruz’s Sept. 16 column titled “QC councilors have P40-M pork each.”
Cruz must be referring to the P7 million-P40 million budgeted for each Quezon City councilor to fund soft projects such as livelihood, educational and medical programs to be implemented in their respective districts. Recognizing the Commission on Audit (COA) recommendation to instead assign these funds to the implementing departments in the executive branch, Mayor Herbert Bautista directed the city’s finance committee to make sure that the recommendation would be followed in preparing the city budget for 2014. Thus next year, the city legislators will focus on legislation, while the appropriate city departments will program and implement the soft projects. The councilors’ role with regard to these projects will only be recommendatory and will be confined to projects within their respective districts.
The mayor has also issued a memorandum to all heads of offices of the QC government to exercise extreme caution in transacting business and any dealings with nongovernment organizations, people’s organizations and foundations. He has made indispensable the submission, by such organizations, of the original or certified true copies of their articles of incorporation and bylaws, SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) registration, mayor’s permit, proof of payment of business taxes, and accreditation by the Community Relations Office in all dealings with the city government.
Even before the Napoles pork barrel scam made headlines, infrastructure budgets, previously assigned to councilors, had been transferred to the City Planning and Development Office.
QC officials have made it a practice to meet with the COA representatives every six months to regularly address, and provide solutions to, COA’s audit observations so that these can be avoided the following year.
We would like to follow the initiatives of the House of Representatives to dispel opportunities for fund misuse, by transferring these funds to line agencies which can better program and monitor their use. There is, however, a big difference between the Priority Development Assistance Fund of the congressmen and senators, and the Community Outreach Program (COP) fund of the councilors. The COP is not given in lump sum to the councilors; neither are its projects implemented by nongovernment organizations. To use the COP, the councilors have to submit a proposal of the projects they intend to implement the following year. The proposal is reviewed by the City Finance Committee, which deliberates on and puts together the city budget for the following year, in coordination with all line departments.
All the projects have to go through the mandatory government procurement process, and all excess funds (resulting from winning bids lower than budget allotments) go back to the city’s general fund. Starting 2014, the city legislators will no longer have COP budgets since these will be allotted to the line agencies mandated by law to be responsible and accountable for specific projects.
—VICTOR ENDRIGA, PhD,
city administrator, Quezon City