CAGAYAN de Oro Vice Mayor Vicente Emano has taken the cudgels for a councilor over a taxpayer-paid accumulated meal tabs that reached over half a million peso in three years.

“Not even a single anomaly was discovered during the term of Councilor Alexander Dacer as president of the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC),” Vice Mayor Emano was quoted in the dialect by a City Council newsletter Monday.

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Emano was defending Dacer over the P600,000 plus worth of meals and snacks owed to least two restaurants, which had accumulated since 2004 and remained unpaid until late last year. The debts were incurred when Dacer, who won a seat at the City Council in 2007, was ABC president.

A statement of account obtained by this paper from anonymous sources shows that a popular fastfood chain billed City Hall at least P245,786 in March, 2008 for the accumulated debts that started all the way back to 2004.

On the same month, the Dynasty Court hotel and restaurant also billed City Hall P367, 026 for debts that had remained unpaid since 2005.

The meals were purportedly eaten during ABC gatherings, but records show that at least over a dozen takeouts were made in 2006 alone. The most of most expensive of these, amounting to P10 thousand, was ordered in the name of ‘‘Gaga Brilleta’’ or Anthony Brilleta, the village chief of Barangay Iponan.

Brilleta and several other persons took turns in ordering takeouts, the documents showed.

But Emano, who was mayor when the debts were incurred, said the meal tabs were nothing when divided among the 80 barangays of the city.

“This should not be an issue. I don’t think there is any anomalous in this,” he said.

A City Hall official who spoke in condition of anonymity said the bills have been settled late last year. 

Dacer was not immediately available for comment.