Tuesday, October 07, 2008 Councilors withdraw votes on ‘anomalous’ measure By Cong B. Corrales
REALIZING too late that they had voted on an “anomalous” measure, opposition councilors tried but failed to amend their votes in Monday’s City Council session.
Councilors Teodolfo Lao and Roger Abaday wanted to change their “yes” votes on two appropriation ordinances to fund part of the city’s long-running expropriation activities that state auditors said were illegal.
The two councilors voted for the two measures when these were put on the table last week.
Lao said he and Abaday wanted to withdraw their votes because they only learned of the Commission on Audit (COA) report commenting on the “illegality” of expropriating lands even without the actual availability of funds.
Lao was referring to the 2007 COA Annual Audit report, in which the state auditors questioned the local government’s practice of paying expropriated lands on installment basis.
At one time, the city expropriated over P117 million worth of lands for the construction of 5th Bridge Access Road, the P400 million South Diversion Road and other minor road projects, COA said. That amount was down to over P85 million as of December 2007.
COA said the practice is against Section 85 of Presidential Decree (PD) 1445, which provides that: “No contract involving the expenditure of public funds shall be entered into unless there is an appropriation therefore, the unexpended balance of which, free of other obligation is sufficient to cover the proposed expenditure.”
The two councilors, however, were overruled by the administration block, citing that amendments of votes can only be done on the same session that a measure was passed.
Councilor President Elipe pointed out that votes can only be reconsidered or recalled in the same session and not on the succeeding sessions.
