THE Commission on Audit's (COA) 2022 annual audit report was released to the public Tuesday, July 25, 2023. Local government units like Cebu City must have received their copy of the report before the uploading of the document on COA’s website. Or not.
Cebu City officials said they couldn’t respond to the findings because they didn’t have an official copy yet. Obviously, they didn’t consider as official the disclosures from a leak here or a preview there, such as the posts of Cebu Updates, a Facebook page run by, among others, a former city official. But how about the information on COA’s official website: not the hard copy and may not be reliable and trustworthy?
Oddly enough, the City Council included the COA report in its agenda for the July 12, 2023 session, meaning it responded to the findings that early, way ahead of the office of the mayor.
Nine days later, on July 21, Cebu City Mayor Mike Rama fielded his two key assistants, City Administrator Collin Rosell and City Legal Officer/special projects specialist Jerone Castillo, to brief City Hall news reporters. On July 26, another press-con on pretty much the same subject was held on July 26.
Apart from the duty to explain to COA -- on which depends its decision to disallow or allow the spending -- there’s the duty to tell the public how and why. The pressure to explain to the public comes in the form of news stories and opinion columns based on the COA report on the internet and comments on social media.
FINDINGS THAT STING. The findings in the COA report that must not make city leaders proud and must hurt include these:
[1] P702.8 million from various outside sources piled up and unspent: The funds were “underutilized” and not used for the government projects that they were released.
The offense: Top officials didn’t plan well enough, didn’t act, or didn’t know how. A consoling bit here for the Rama administration is that the unspent money was accumulated for the past 16 years. What Mayor Rama’s “Working Group” can do is segregate the amount that poured in during his term as mayor and explain why it was not used -- unless COA will say it’s the job of each mayor who comes in to spend the unspent funds in its hands, even if they had been given during the watch of previous mayors.
It’s not just a matter of tarnished reputation of the city’s mayors for the past 16 years: They haven’t been efficient managers. The current administration faces the prospect of returning all that money to its origin. Though one may wonder about the efficiency of a system that allowed in the first place such a huge amount to pile up at Cebu City Hall unused.
[2] P1.992 million cash advance for a Canada trip by the mayor, three other officials. COA called the cash advance for August 19 to 27, 2022 travel “irregular.” If COA needs documents, the City will “handle that,” said CA Rosell who was with the group. The officials, except the mayor, allegedly had no authority to travel from DILG (Department of the Interior and Local Government). Does the City have that document? Also, COA noted, the P300,000 cash advance for each was “excessive,” considering the Cebu-Vancouver-Cebu fare of P25,128 to P27,920 per ticket.
Rosell told news reporters their visit was “productive,” which may justify it as beneficial but may not excuse the violation of a specific requirement or the extra cash.
[3] Undistributed cash from P791.8 million aid to typhoon Odette victims. Resident Ombudsman Homer Mariano Cabaral confirmed the delay and related irregularities, such as forged signatures of would-be recipients and diversion of cash to scammers, duplication of names and payment to deceased persons, and lack of supporting documents. The local ombudsman in effect affirmed COA’s findings but he had something to brag about: he investigated it on order of the mayor before COA released its report. It suspended payments and thus saved P9 million, which went back to the city treasury.
Cabaral also admitted lapses in the implementation of the mayor’s executive order, resulting in selective distribution of aid. COA held random interviews that supported its finding -- and Cabaral’s own disclosure.
[4] P199.23 million cash advance for P1.3 billion drainage project. COA said the cash advance was “excessive,” compounding the ugly and sad fact that the project hadn’t moved as of the end of December 2022.
Initiated during mayor Edgardo Labella’s administration, said Atty. Castillo. He didn’t say, and no one asked, when the “excessive” cash advance was made and what the new administration did to push the contractor.
But Castillo did pounce on the fact that then city administrator Floro Casas Jr. signed the contract for the mayor when there was no express authority from the City Council regarding that specific contract. Even Labella himself, the mayor at the time, had not been given such authority to sign the contract; the surrogate couldn’t do more. Casas said there was no need for the authorization since that was already given in the lump-sum outlay the Sanggunian had already approved.
[5] P1.1 million for shirts, P1.7 million for food. Which COA found “unnecessary” and on which the two key Rama officials didn’t comment. Unlike officials of Liloan, Cebu, who were admonished by COA for “unnecessary” and “irregular” spending on roasted pig, Attys. Rosell and Castillo must not have found any heritage value or inherent attraction -- comparable to Liloan lechon’s -- in the thousands of T-shirts and a whole lot of breakfasts, lunches and snacks that Cebu City Hall paid for.
[6] Lapses in grant of cash aid to seniors totaling P922.780 million in 2022. COA said the violations, despite “clear and express prohibition,” ranged from paying claims through authorization to non-existent signatures, and deceased recipients. Expectedly, city officials routinely promised to correct the flaws in the process of paying out the cash aid.
[7] More than P4.5 billion in uncollected real property taxes to boost the city’s coffers for development projects. Rosell and Castillo said City Hall will use administrative remedies against delinquent taxpayers. That will hardly explain the failure of public officials or even amount to a threat against non-payors who apparently have been getting away with their delinquency.
RELATED ARTICLES:
COA flags Cebu City for irregularities in financial assistance, purchases SunStar, July 17, 2023.
Cebu City Gov’t. defends self from COA findings, SunStar, July 21, 2023
COA’S FLAGGING... It surely catches, sometimes grabs, and holds public attention for awhile, specifically on the findings that tell or indicate misspending of public money.
But the public doesn’t know the specific result to most of COA disclosures, particularly those that showed flagrant violation of law and rules of audit the agency has harped on in its annual reports.
Who and how many are ever charged, prosecuted in court and found guilty? How much of the money lost by negligence or corruption is ever recovered? On disallowances, is the fund from the disallowed spending ever repaid by the erring official?
Even on COA recommendations in the audit report, how many are ever complied with? COA does count but it’s hardly worth a cheer from the public. Its 2022 audit of Cebu City offers a fresh example: It reports that of the 57 recommendations COA made in 2021, the City implemented only eight, partially implemented 21, and didn’t implement 28.
...WHICH NO PRESIDENT CAN STOP. But the COA flagging does help somehow. It embarrasses the offender or suspected wrongdoers, though not enough to drive them to resign. The offense is used against them in future elections.
Of course, it’s annoying to those involved in the transaction. Then president Rodrigo Duterte was so incensed by the COA disclosures that in 2021 he publicly told COA to “stop the flagging.” That did not stop and he could not stop the flagging: Reporting the audit to the nation is, after all, an essential part of COA’s job under the law and the Constitution.