Bacolod mayor suspended one month 9 days before term ends

Bacolod Mayor Monico Puentevella. INQUIRER FILE

WITH only nine days left in his term of office, losing Bacolod City Mayor Monico Puentevella was suspended for one month and one day by the Office of the Ombudsman for refusing to implement its order to suspend two city officials during  Christmas.

Puentevella lost to Bacolod Rep. Evelio Leonardia in the 2016 elections and will step down on June 30.

Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales on Wednesday said she had suspended Puentevella for “simple misconduct” for delaying the implementation of her order two years ago to suspend two city building officials.

She said she ordered the suspension last July 2014 of Bacolod City Building Officer Isidro Sun Jr. and Building Inspector Jose Maria Makilan for “unethical conduct.”

Puentevella reportedly received her order on December 9, 2015, but instead of immediately implementing the suspension, the mayor wrote back saying “in the spirit of Christmas, the effectivity of the order is set (to) January 1, 2015.”

His reply did not sit well with Morales, who insisted that her decisions were “immediately effective and executory.”

She said the Ombudsman Act of 1989 did not “authorize a head of office or agency to schedule a different date for the effectivity of the decision.”

Sought for comment, Puentevella said he had yet to receive a copy of the order.

“If I get suspended for one month to give another human being, a mere employee, 15 days furlough to celebrate Christmas with his family, so be it. (It) doesn’t bother me. I can sleep well,” he said in a text message.

90-day suspension

The Bacolod mayor was previously slapped with a 90-day preventive suspension by the Sandiganbayan for a graft case involving the alleged anomalous purchase of P26-million worth of information technology packages. The alleged overpriced computers and software packages went to public schools in Bacolod from 2001 to 2006, when Puentevella was still a lawmaker.

Puentevalla was a member of the House of Representatives from 2001 through 2007.

The Ombudsman order suspending Puentevella was served in November 2015 after the antigraft court’s Fourth Division denied the motion for reconsideration filed by Puentevella. The court upheld its Sept. 28, 2015 resolution ordering his preventive suspension.

Puentevella, who is out on bail, is a former chair of the Philippine Olympic Committee and commissioner of the Philippine Sports Commission from 1994 to 2007. With Inquirer Archives