Citizens voice in the budget

Two months before the start of the annual budget deliberations, the Cebu City Council has called for a public hearing .

The apparent goal is to aim their sights on the Rama administration.

The bone of contention is the P1 billion overdraft stated in the Commission on Audit (COA’s) audit memorandum in which auditors chided anew the Rama administration for overspending and appropriating funds for purposes not intended under the city’s annual budget.

How they would approach this would be interesting to see in light of Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella’s pledge to allow wider public participation in the City Council sessions.

To make it appear that it’s not an all-out prosecution of the mayor’s executive department, the council also scheduled another public hearing on the same date to discuss an application by the Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) to pass on the P34 million cost of a busted transformer to consumers.

The two public hearings would help create the public impression that the council isn’t obstructionist or engaged in “witch-hunting,” a term used by Mayor Michael Rama who has prepared his department heads and the local finance committee to appear before tomorrow’s session.

As in the past three years, the mayor accused the council of severely reducing his multi-million peso budget on the premise that his administration failed to find enough revenue sources to justify his ambitious projects.

We’d like to see if ordinary citizens will be able to voice their sentiments in the forum.

The hearing could be dicey for Labella and Team Rama allies, who have vowed a more transparent, accessible council to the public.

This would require parliamentary skill to steer the discussion to more vital issues and not allow it to deteriorate into name-calling, sweeping accusations and yes, “witch-hunting.”

It would depend on how the vice mayor would handle the discussions and how responsive the majority bloc would be to his suggestions and proposals.

In the spirit of transparency, we would like to hear a sober but enlightening discussion of the true state of finances of Cebu City.

It’s important that department heads and local finance committee members realize that they are accountable, not to the councilors or the mayor, but to taxpayers.

How candid or clear they are in explaining the administration’s practice of shuffling funds for purposes other than what was was intended (as observed by COA auditors) remains to be seen tomorrow.

The two public hearings can be a spectacle for grandstanding or a fruitful and informative forum that will let ordinary city resident understand where his or her taxes are going.