LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET – At a time when the Arroyo administration is wooing the support of as many local officials as possible to keep a firm grasp on power, it can ill afford to displease a governor.

Or so Ifugao Gov. Teodoro Baguilat Jr. thought.

Baguilat said he was ready to burn bridges with the administration over a simple request that he said his province was entitled to – share in taxes from the operations of a dam in Ifugao.

Baguilat found himself in a quandary after pledging continued support to Ms Arroyo amid calls for her to resign over allegations of massive corruption in her administration but witnessing for himself the neglect that local government units were going through.

On Wednesday, he assailed Malacañang for sitting on his province’s request to release P28 million in taxes from operations of the Magat Dam.

The taxes were due last year.

“It is ironic that this administration is asking the governors to declare support yet it could not act on simple requests like the tax my province is entitled to,” he said.

“This administration appears to have a selective amnesia.”

He said he has repeatedly asked the Department of Energy to help facilitate the release of the tax share, which was due from taxes that the National Power Corp. and SN Aboitiz Power Inc. (SNAP), owned by a family close to the administration, paid for Magat Dam’s operations.

SNAP is a joint venture between Aboitiz Power Corp. and SN Power Invest AS of Norway that won the right to rehabilitate the 360-megawatt Magat Hydroelectric Power Plant from Napocor in an auction last year.

The dam is between Ifugao and Isabela but the dam’s reservoir lies in Ifugao.

Baguilat said red tape at the DOE frustrated him. Often, no official was around to meet with him to discuss the tax share.

He said DOE officials would ignore him every time he requested for a meeting with Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes or any of his undersecretaries.

Asked if he would withdraw his support for President Arroyo due to this, Baguilat said: “My support for [Ms Arroyo] is conditional. For the moment, I am for the rule of law. I, too, would like to know the truth.”

He said the support he gave Ms Arroyo “must be matched (by) her administration’s sincerity to attend to the concerns of local government units.”

“For most Ifugaos, the issue of supporting [Ms Arroyo] in this troubled times depended on Malacañang’s willingness to address my constituents’ concerns,” he said.

Baguilat got mad when he learned that five Ifugao towns – Alfonso Lista, Mayoyao, Aguinaldo, Lamut and the capital Lagawe – “stood to lose their power supply for failure to pay their bills to electric cooperatives in Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya.”

He said the five towns depended on the province’s share from the national wealth tax to pay their electric bills.

Baguilat assailed the government for being insensitive to the situation.

“My province hosts one of the biggest hydroelectric dams. Yet we don’t get electricity from Magat. We have to tap power from Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya which makes the rates of our electric consumption higher,” he said.

In his visit to Baguio City two weeks ago, Reyes, who has had barely any experience with energy prior to his appointment at the DOE, said he has incorporated plans in the DOE’s 10-year energy program to give tax shares to towns and provinces whose waters feed the hydroelectric power plants located outside their territories.

This proposed amendment to the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) of 2001 addresses issues raised over Magat Dam, he said.

But Baguilat said Ifugao needed DOE to address the issue quickly because of a power disconnection notice issued to several villages by the Ifugao Electric Cooperative.

“[SNAP] has already agreed to pay Ifugao its share, but they are waiting for DOE to give them the legal mandate to do so,” he said.