Thursday, December 06, 2007 Jonas, councilors expect no hitches in budget talks
WITH the cordiality between Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes and the majority city councilors established, the fast passage of the 2008 annual budget is now their next concern.
Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna and Councilors Victor Biaño and Emil Rosal admitted that they are tired of going through the vicious cycle of proposing, passing, vetoing and overriding ordinances.
Change of mindset
Even the mayor’s emissary, City Administrator Briccio Boholst, said they need to change their mindset, as they expected before that legislators will always block every move they initiate in the council.
Cortes, Boholst and other officials were at odds with majority councilors and on various issues. Some of their differences even reached the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas.
As a result, Cortes had been vetoing ordinances and the councilors were overriding them.
Differences
Last Monday, a special session was called by the council. But before the session, Boholst had a close-door talk with councilors to thresh differences.
Even Fortuna, who has often said that their lines are open despite trading harsh words, welcomed the executive branch’s recent move.
He called it “outside the regular procedure.” He and Biaño said this is better than insisting on who is right and who is more powerful.
“We will try to narrow the gap and try to understand, discern and find out what he (the mayor) really wants and put ourselves in his shoes,” Biaño said.
The mayor is also happy, not only for themselves but for all Mandauehanons.
Lesson
All of them agreed that can lessen the possibility of a budget war, as they prepare to deliberate on allocations for next year.
Fortuna said this is also one reason they are conducting a series of budget hearings so councilors will understand why such amount is allocated to a particular department.
Rosal said that last Oct. 16, the mayor submitted to the council annual budget worth P688 million.
A week later the mayor’s office submitted a revised version of the proposed budget. (OCP)
