Tuesday, November 04, 2008 Seares: The big spender By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
CEBU City has the biggest total liabilities, at P5.739 billion, among all cities in the country. It is also the biggest spender, at P1.73 billion in 2007, among cities in Cebu.
And that’s bad? Consider City Hall’s pitch: The debts will bring in a lot of money once South Road Properties (SRP) starts humming. As to last year’s spending, Cebu City is also deemed among the best cities in net income.
Commission on Audit (COA), which totes the figures, doesn’t preach against big spending. COA focuses on rules and limits: whether spending for, say, salaries, hasn’t gone beyond the roof or whether the purpose is what the law allows.
COA doesn’t fret on uncreative spending, only if it violates some principle accountants whip up from legislative wisdom or folly.
“Fun/fun”
Cebu City as big spender isn’t the “man of distinction/good-looking/so refined” in the Shirley Bassey song, the guy who walks in a joint and is asked if he likes to have “fun/fun” and “a few laughs/laughs.”
Cebu City is an LGU that, everyone thought, didn’t have enough money in 2007 for basic services such as filling street
potholes or providing housing for the city’s homeless.
Wonder not why it was the biggest spender last year among Cebu cities. It had to spend most everything it earned, what with the huge SRP debt gobbling up most of collected taxes.
What a reasonable critic can do is not just cite the city’s rank in spending but identify the objects of the spending, if they were necessary or frivolous.
If Cebu City was a big spender in 2007, wait till the big money from the SRP starts flowing into City coffers.
