THE LTO giveth driver’s licenses, the LTO taketh them away.
The basic rule is clear enough: only the Land Transportation Office (LTO) has the authority to confiscate a driver’s license. Not the traffic police, including the Highway Patrol Group. Not traffic officers, enforcers or aides of cities, provinces and towns, including even Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA). The sole exception: when those people are deputized as LTO agents.
Alberto Suansing, who had served as chief of LTO and LFTRB and was secretary general of Philippine Global Road Safety Partnership, summed it up in an “Inquirer” news story in 2017, which inspired the paraphrase of the biblical line about LTO giving and taking away.
Traffic violation receipt
MMDA tried to wield the power. Under rules that MMDA itself laid down, a traffic officer in 1995 confiscated the license of a motorist, lawyer Dante Garin, giving him a traffic violation receipt for illegal parking.
Garin sued MMDA before the Regional Trial Court and got back his license. MMDA appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the RTC decision. MMDA, the SC ruled, is not vested with police power and is not a local government or a public corporation that can legislate. It has no power to enact ordinances “for the welfare of the community.”
MMDA vs. Garin
The MMDA-Garin case is often cited by those who support the Cebu City ordinance sponsored by Councilors Eugenio Gabuya and Margot Osmena, which seeks to authorize Citoms or traffic personnel to confiscate licenses of erring drivers.
The pro-ordinance line of thinking: the SC in the Garin case rejects MMDA as lawmaker and enforcer, it being merely an administrative body, but upholds the exercise of such power if it were exercised by an LGU such as Cebu City. The tribunal’s concluding message: MMDA efforts “must be authorized by a valid law or ordinance or regulation arising from a legitimate source.”
Although City Attorney Joseph Bernales didn’t argue it in a legal opinion on the Gabuya-Margot ordinance, this reasoning is hard to resist: If it were Cebu City, not MMDA, doing its “sworn duty to promote general welfare,” the SC would’ve upheld the right to seize driver’s licenses.
Express ban on LGUs
So the bone to fight over is not the authority of the City Council to legislate on road safety. What is disputed is the City Council’s power to legislate on handling of drivers licenses.
The authority given to LTO under the Land Transportation Law to issue and confiscate, suspend, revoke or reinstate a driver’s license is specific. More than that, expecting conflict with LGUs, the Land Transportation Code (Republic Act #4136, Section 62) provides that “no provincial, city or municipal board or council shall enact or enforce any ordinance or resolution in conflict with it.”
And it cannot be said that the Local Government Code (R.A. 7160), which empowers LGUs to promote the general welfare, took away what it gave to LTO 27 years earlier. Had lawmakers intended to take away LTO’s power, they would’ve been as specific as when they gave it.
Settling the conflict
The exceptions to LTO’s sole power and authority: authority of the court in cases before it and in other cases provided by the LTO law. When can a local traffic officer who’s not deputized by LTO confiscate a driver’s license and issue a T.O.P. or temporary operating permit? When the violation results in injury or death.
But the LGU’s authority may be harmonized with LTO’s. The City Council can enact rules on road safety but the ordinance shall not clash with national law or rules laid down by LTO in accordance with the said law. For example, the local penalty cannot be harsher than the national penalty.
Slug it out in court
As to confiscating licenses, the city may ask LTO to have Citom enforcers deputized as LTO agents. Wait, the mayor had a serious verbal brawl with the LTO regional chief and was threatened, three times, of a slap on the face by the president.
Well, LTO and the city may end up slugging it out in court. After the MMDA-Garin case, an SC ruling on the Cebu situation will “enrich” jurisprudence. And leave a lesson on how two government agencies can mess themselves up while trying to fix the traffic problem.