Council scraps Lim’s intel funds

The election year has apparently made the local government budget part of the battleground between the clashing forces in Manila.

Now dominated by a faction critical of Mayor Alfredo Lim, the city council broke a five-year pattern and deleted the P191.5-million intelligence fund initially placed under his discretion in the 2013 budget.

The money was instead realigned for the use of public hospitals and for land purchases, a move denounced by allies of the reelectionist mayor as politically motivated and detrimental to public service. City legal officer Renato de la Cruz said it practically “stripped (Lim) of the opportunity to serve.”

Aside from the removal of the special fund, the budget of the mayor’s office was also drastically slashed from P198 million to P117 million.

Councilor Bernardito “Bernie” Ang, chair of the appropriations committee, preferred to call it a “transfer,” saying the money was simply redistributed in favor of the Urban Settlements Office for its land acquisition program and Manila’s six public hospitals for their purchase of laboratory equipment.

Ang maintained that nothing was removed since the P9.2-billion proposed budget remained the same in total when Ordinance No. 8300 was passed last month.

On Feb. 22, Lim vetoed four items in the measure—the reduction of the mayor’s budget, the deletion of the special activities fund and the allocation of capital outlay for urban settlements and the six hospitals—for supposedly being prejudicial to public welfare and for being ultra vires or beyond the powers of the council.

In his letter to the council, Lim said the executive’s proposed outlay had been cut “to such level as to practically render the local executive office paralyzed to operate its department.”

But a week later, the councilors stood firm and reversed each veto with 29 votes.

Before this year’s budget realignments, Lim had been granted about P140 million in intelligence funds by the council each year in the last five years.

This year, the fund was transferred to the Land for the Landless program of the Urban Settlements Office, increasing its capital outlay by P59.5 million.

Meanwhile, Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center, Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center, Justice Jose Abad Santos General Hospital and Sta. Ana Hospital were also given an additional P50 million each, while Ospital ng Sampaloc and Ospital ng Tondo got P30 million each.

Lim’s chief of staff, Ricardo de Guzman, said the changes were “definitely” influenced by the coming elections.

“The hospitals (already) have enough allocations,” De Guzman noted, but “they are after some brownie points (nagpapa-pogi).” He was referring to 28 incumbent councilors (out of the total of 38) who broke away from the Lim camp last year and allied themselves with former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada, Lim’s main challenger in the May elections.

“The amount that is supposed to be spent on other public service projects was removed and put to hospitals and urban settlements. What will they do with it? They have enough allocations,” De la Cruz said.

“If they need anything, the money is in the executive. It’s the mayor who knows which hospital is in need, not the council,” De la Cruz said.

Once the mayor’s office receives a copy of the council’s reversal of the vetoes, the mayor will again exercise his veto powers, he said.

The councilors maintain that the mayor could only use this power once under the Local Government Code, while Lim’s camp insists on having a second veto based on the Charter of the City of Manila.

Ang denied that the changes were politically motivated, saying “President Erap’s instruction was very clear: Don’t use the power of the purse for politics. The budget should benefit the constituents.”

“The council doesn’t intend to grant the mayor with an intelligence fund that has no programs and no accountability,” Ang said.

“I don’t understand why it is prejudicial to public welfare to put funds in public hospitals. It’s a social service,” he said. “When we deliberated on the budget, we learned that the hospitals need more equipment. Sta. Ana, for example, is applying for tertiary accreditation at the Department of Health. How will the DOH grant accreditation if the hospital lacks equipment?”