Thursday, January 31, 2008 Drop pay for legislative aides from annual budget: Jonas
MANDAUE City Mayor Jonas Cortes is not against the hiring of legislative assistants, but including their salaries in the annual budget may be irregular since the ordinance creating their positions was only approved last Jan. 17.
Cortes also said two major items—traffic enforcement and beautification, each allocated with P10 million—were omitted from the executive budget.
He said these “disappeared” but Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna said they just moved the items to “other programs and projects.”
But the mayor said P2.3 million was lost in the transfer.
Supplemental
Cortes, in an interview yesterday, said he sees no problem if the members of the City Council will hire a legislative staff and pass a supplemental budget later to pay for their salaries.
Though he supports the creation of legislative assistants, Cortes said he cannot include their salary in the annual budget.
The proposed 2008 annual budget was submitted to the council last October, while the ordinance creating legislative assistants was only approved last month.
The mayor finds it irregular to include the new employees’ salaries in the annual budget because the positions were not yet created when the appropriation ordinance was approved.
Allocation
Inserting the P6.9 million allocation for legislative assistants in the annual budget is not allowed in the Local Government Code, he said.
He said insertion is only allowed if this involves statutory and contractual obligations of the City.
Other items in the annual budget that drew the mayor’s attention is the funding for Traffic Enforcement Program and the Beautification and Greening Program.
These two items had no budget allocation in the legislative document, said Cortes’ consultant Francisco Amit.
Implication
But upon realizing its implication City Secretary Frelyn Mabanag, in her letter to Cortes, cited “clerical error that was inadvertently missed out by our encoder” as the reason for its zero funding.
The two items were then moved from the lump sum appropriation to other programs and projects.
The other programs and projects totaled P41,310,112.
Irregular
With the traffic and beautification programs added, this now totaled P58,923,200 or a difference of P17,613,088, not P20 million.
This surprised Cortes as P2,386,912 disappeared in the transfer.
Cortes said this is tantamount to juggling of funds and altering of the amount is irregular, as nobody is allowed to change a legislative document.
With these changes, Cortes said Fortuna cannot claim that he did not touch the figures in the annual budget. (OCP)
