Thursday, January 31, 2008 Break in ‘hostilities’ looms between Capitol, City bosses
THE Cebu Provincial Government, through a consultant, accepted yesterday the offer of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña for a ceasefire.
Lawyer Rory Jon Sepulveda, Capitol consultant on information, revenue generation and compliance, said, “I agree with him. Let’s stop comparing the province and the city. It’s apples and oranges.”
Osmeña earlier called for a stop to the comparisons between the two local government units, especially on questions related to the construction of the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) and the Cebu City Sports Center.
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Sepulveda, however, reminded Osmeña that it was the mayor who triggered the comparisons.
“Kinsa may nag-una-una? We never compared the Province with the City. Siya mao’y nanguna (He started it) by making unprovoked attacks. Og dili na siya, di dili,” said Sepulveda.
He said the first “attack” was when Osmeña said that he would come up with full-page advertisements declaring the City is better than Cebu Province in terms of tax collection.
The second one was when the mayor said that the complaint filed by WT Construction against the Province is “proof” that the CICC is overpriced.
Transparency
WT Construction is asking for P261 million to pay for additional work done on the CICC, but which the Capitol said wasn’t covered by any contract. Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Ester Veloso of Branch 6 is handling the case.
Capitol answered back, saying the statement of the mayor is a virtual confession that the sports center is also overpriced because after it was built for the Palarong Pambansa in 1994, contractors of the sports center also sued the City for additional works.
The mayor then issued a statement saying the City is better than the Province in terms of transparency because they never tried to hide the fact that there were additional works on the sports center.
The Province countered that they never tried to hide the additional billing from WT, but that during the public accounting by Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia last May, she was not yet aware of the additional billing for P261 million.
The governor later acknowledged that WT had made such a claim, but that the Province was still verifying the bill. (KNT)
