Greater role for people in government

Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III said his first 100 days in the provincial Capitol saw progress in fulfilling his campaign promises.

Davide cited the participatory process in setting Capitol’s development agenda as one of the milestones in his first 100 days.

He also rolled out his fiscal management style when he instructed Capitol managers to make a more realistic budget which would be substantially lower compared to this year’s budget.

The governor in an interview yesterday cited the consultative summit last week as one of the concrete examples of his “participative and bottoms-up approach” style in governance.

“There’s still a lot of things to do. I don’t even call them accomplishments, they are still works in progress. The summit enabled us to make a road map. Now, we have crafted a vision and mission for the administration,” he said.

“I believe it was an eye-opener for me. We were able to elicit from them their ideas. It was good timing that their aspirations fitted in with our platforms,” he added.

Tight budgeting

Expect much lower figures for the Cebu provincial government’s annual budget for 2014 compared to its present budget set by the previous administration.

Davide yesterday gave a rough estimate of the annual budget to be in the P2 billion range after conducting a series of budget hearings with department heads.

Although the figure isn’t final yet, the ballpark numbers given by Davide indicate that the budget will be smaller than the P3.6 billion proposed by former Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia in 2013.

“We haven’t really finalized it yet but sometime next week, maybe we can pass it to the Provincial Board (PB) for approval,” he told reporters yesterday.

The governor in an earlier interview described the 2013 budget proposal of Garcia as “bloated” and ordered department heads to be “practical and realistic” in coming up with their respective offices’ budget.

The P3.673 billion proposed annual budget submitted by former governor Garcia last year was 41 percent higher than the 2012 proposed budget of P3.658 billion.

It was reduced to P3.259 billion or P400 million lower after it faced scrutiny from PB members not affiliated with Garcia. The PB is currently dominated by the local Liberal Party (LP) headed by Davide.

Challenge

Asked to name the biggest challenge which he encountered in his young administration, Davide cited the month-long search and rescue operations of MV Thomas Aquinas sea tragedy last August.

“We still face a lot of challenges and we won’t back down from them,” he added.