La Castellana town nixes 2013 budget, too

THE Municipal Government of La Castellana has also disapproved the proposed municipal budget for 2013 of Mayor Alberto Nicor due to some disagreements among some members of the council and the mayor.

Like in the Provincial Government of Negros Occidental, the increase of employees' salaries is also one of the reasons for the disapproval of the town's annual general budget.

Nicor proposes a P106 million municipal budget for 2013.

The disapproval was made by the council during its regular session last Wednesday. The votes of the ten members resulted in a 5-5 tie, which was broken by Vice Mayor Chad Feria who tuned down the mayor’s proposed budget.

Those who voted for the passage of the budget were council members Nene Vera, Cristina Vera, Tim Geollegue, Eden Ligason and Niel Labesores (Youth Council) while those who voted for the disapproval of the budget were SB Members Beboy Elumba, Felipe Tan, Lemuel Lajo, Guillermo Arroz and Rudy Torres (ABC President).

Elumba said that the division of the house took place after Councilor Lajo, who is a last termer Municipal Council member, had a privilege speech where he asked his colleagues to unite for the inclusion of the first tranche of the salary increase of its municipal employees.

Elumba said they have been pushing for the mayor to include in the budget the mandated salary increase of the employees because it has been long delayed.

He pointed out that in other towns and cities the first tranche of the salary increases were already given and some are already giving the third and fourth tranches of the salary increase.

In the case of the Capitol employees, they are pressing for the last tranche of their salary increase.

Aside from the concerns of employees' salary increase, Elumba said that they could not pass the budget because of huge allocations for unpaid and unobligated expenditures.

"These are highly questionable because, like in the holding of ' Bailes de Luces', all expenses from foods to the prizes and everything have been allocated in the previous year’s budget and we believe those were all paid for but the executive would still include payments for such obligations," Elumba explained.

He added that they are closely scrutinizing the budget because, in previous years, they have observed an alleged overspending from the budget by the executive and that the mayor would always submit for approval Supplemental Budgets as early as the second quarter of the year.

Nicor could not be reached for comment as of press time.