As if the Cebu City Council isn’t giving the mayor a hard time with the allocation of funds for his projects, they now decided to limit the fuel supply only to city government vehicles only.
The council rejected a proposal by Councilor Jose Daluz III to allow fire trucks, city police vehicles and even barangay vehicles from availing of the city oil depot stationed at the South Road Properties (SRP).
The rejection comes at a time when the city’s police and fire trucks will be kept busy patrolling the streets and monitoring the barangays for any crime incidents or fire outbreaks specially during Holy Week.
The argument by Councilor Margot Osmena, the council’s budget committee seems reasonable enough. “Working on the same pie (P300 million for fuel subsidy), we can’t expand the pie if we don’t have the ingredients to do that. We have to work within the same pie,” she said.
The council also pointed out that the fuel budget would have been bigger had it not been for Mayor Michael Rama’s decision to buy brand new vehicles for the barangays, particularly those he considers allies for his reelection bid this year.
In deciding to buy the barangays new vehicles—and not just multi-cabs, but branded four-wheeler types that can traverse mountain barangays—Rama has somewhat cut down on the fuel budget that could be used by the police for their mobile patrols.
Besides the council was correct when it said that the police and the fire protection agencies receive a budget from their national office, even if the budget is quite small and the national government expects their local government units to cover the budget deficiency.
And Rama won’t be the last mayor to decide to award brand new vehicles and other perks to barangay officials just to make them happy. Last we heard, Rep. Tomas Osmeña, Margot’s husband and former mayor, promised perks to his loyal barangay captains if and when they help him win again this time against Rama, his former protege.
What it all boils down to is for the Rama administration to make judicious use of city government resources with the right amount of checks and balances to make sure that they aren’t used selectively or indiscriminately.
To have them produce a list or an accounting of the expenditures spent for their operations would take too much time for the public to digest which is what the council’s job is for.
And whether the mayor likes it or not, strings have to be pulled either way to make sure that he or his officials don’t go around spending funds to their hearts’ content no matter their protestations of innocence or being committed to the public good.