‘Rama acting like a spoiled child on budget’

IN rejecting anew a proposed P13 billion annual budget for Cebu City, Vice Mayor Joy Augustus Young compared Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama to a spoiled child who wants everything despite his parent’s limited income.

“How can you propose a budget that’s over your income?” Young asked as he echoed a tirade by Rep. Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City’s south district that Rama’s “wishlist” didn’t include  clear revenue sources.

“All of us want to buy something but we only wait for how much money we have. We spend according to the limit of our income,” he said.

Young said the mayor should have learned about his budget experience last year.

“If he’s doing it the first time maybe we could excuse it, maybe he was persuaded by his treasurer but this is the second time he proposed a big budget. I don’t know what’s on his mind,” Young said.

Last year, Mayor Rama proposed an P11.8 billion budget which he later reduced to P10.2 billion for this year.  The council rejected his proposal and the budget was scaled down to P5.2 billion.

In last year’s budget deliberations, the council questioned the additional fund requests of departments despite their failure to spend all of their budget in the previous year.

Rama said he will submit the city’s budget for next year to the City Council secretariat sometime today before his trip to Rome, Italy.

Still Young said the various City Hall departments had yet to fully spend the funds allocated for their projects this year. /Correspondent Sean Timothy Salvador