BuB feared to become a budget fixture

Alarm bells are being sounded over the efforts of the Aquino administration to institutionalize in the 2016 budget the Bottom-up Budgeting (BuB) scheme, which administration critics call a clone of the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) that was alloted P20.8 billion in this year’s budget.

Since a presidential election is scheduled next year, many are questioning the stepped-up effort to put the BuB as a mainstay of the yearly budget.

Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad said in the FY 2016 Budget Call of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), that the implementation of BuB would also be scaled up through greater involvement and responsibility of local government units (LGUs) in anti-poverty and basic public projects in their localities.

Government agencies were also tasked to focus on accelerating the overall execution of programs and projects that would reduce poverty and promote economic growth in more regions in the country through the BuB.

At the House of Representatives, administration ally Agusan del Norte Rep. Erlpe John Amante has filed Resolution 1932 that makes the Grassroots Participatory Budgeting (GPB) or BuB as a permanent feature of the budget.

“There is a need to dispel notions that funding for the GPB is a form of presidential pork that has failed to deliver its promise,” Amante said in filing the resolution.

Amante said there is a need to institutionalize the program in the national budget to ensure that the gains of the Aquino administration are continued and that it can be further enhanced to be made effective in improving the social and economic well-being of the people.

“If the new budgeting approach is guided by the principles of convergence, participation, and citizen empowerment, can help fight corruption and pro-mote transparency and accountability in the use of public funds,” Amante said.

Earlier, Western Samar Rep. Mel Senen Sarmiento, Liberal Party secretary general, acknowledged that the GPB was meant to “cure” the restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court on the DAP in funding unprogrammed projects.

But Sarmiento insisted the BuB is not a DAP clone.

“The GPB, instead, enables Congress and citizens to better scrutinize the government’s spending plan and can hold departments and agencies accountable for their performance,” Sarmiento said.

Former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno had slammed the BuB, saying it makes local government units prone to patronage with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) which is headed by Manuel Roxas II, the presumptive LP standard-bearer.

Diokno maintained that the best tool for fiscal autonomy is the formula-based automatically released internal revenue allotment (IRA).

“Local authorities should be able to chart their own future for their own local constituencies. They should not be dependent on central government officials, like the secretary of the Interior and Local Government, for their own local projects,” he said.

“Unless local officials learn to operate within their budget constraint, they will continue to be pawns in the political game played by ambitious politicians. At the same time, ambitious national officials would be subject to gaming by astute local political leaders,” he said.

Diokno said that, rather than addressing national concerns, like infrastructure projects that cut across political jursidictions, the focus will be on small projects that would appeal to particular local officials in search of political support.

Kabataan Partylist Rep. Terry Ridon explained that the implementing rules of the GPB gives LGUs the ability to cancel and replace certain programs and projects, a characteristic similar to that of DAP.

In National Budget Memorandum 121, DBM stated that, “If a project [under GPB] is deemed not feasible for implementation after validation of the concerned participating agency, the project may be replaced with another project that can be implemented by the same participating agency in the same city or municipality.”

“By allowing the cancellation and replacement of projects already identified in the General Appropriations Act, the GPB has actually opened a new way for the Executive Department to usurp the congressional power of the purse,” Ridon said.

In its 2014 ruling on DAP, the SC has already struck down as unconstitutional the “funding of projects, activities and programs that were not covered by any appropriation in the General Appropriations Act.”

“Replacing a project or program already approved by Congress through the GPB mechanism is thus illegal and unconstitutional,” Ridon stressed.

Senators are also convinced that the discretionary nature of the GPB makes it a pork barrel of the Executive.

Since Malacañang will select the LGUs, Sen. Nancy Binay said, it is possible that more would be received by favored cities and municipalities in the country.

She cited the DBM admitting during a Development Budget Coordinating Committee briefing on the proposed 2015 budget that some LGUs could get more than one GPB project allocation.

“This is why I always bring this GPB issue up in every budget hearing because the nature of the new system is very similar to lump-sum [budgeting],” Binay said.

Under the GPB, the Executive branch will come up with a menu containing various priority programs and projects for the development of the poorest localities in the country.

The LGUs would then submit a “wish list” of projects based on the allotted amount for each LGU.

The GPB was meant to make the budget inclusive for the “poorest of the poor,” but the senator said other LGUs, Makati City among them, also got allocation from the budgeting scheme.

Taguig City, according to Binay, also got over P1 million from the GPB inserted into the expenses of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) for 2015.

It was learned that the DBM has allocated a total of P444.2 million for the GPB of the DOLE, and around P1.097 million is allocated to Taguig City for assistance to persons with disability (PWDs).

Sen. Francis Escudero, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, maintained that the GPB cannot be considered “pork,” since legislators have no hand in its implementation, in the first place.

In fact, he said, some congressmen are not happy with the GPB because the funds are directly given to the LGUs, and it is the local government officials who will decide on how they want to use the funds.

He explained that pork-barrel funds are allocations under the discretion of the legislators—senators and congressmen—while GBP funds directly go to the LGUs, not the lawmakers.

“If you’re talking about vestiges of pork barrel, there is none because legislators have no control over the [GPB]. As for the suspicion that only favored LGUs will be given funds, almost every LGU was given [funds under the] GBP,” Escudero said. LUIS LEONCIO