Judge dismisses Oca’s budget case

By SHIELA MAE BUTLIG
Correspondent

A REGIONAL court has trashed the Moreno administration’s case against the city council majority over the move to slash the proposed 2015 budget for city hall, the Gold Star Daily learned on Tuesday.

In a ruling dated Oct. 8, Judge Jeoffre Acebido of the 31st branch of the Regional Trial Court of Misamis Oriental dismissed the civil case filed as a result of the city council’s decision to reduce Mayor Oscar Moreno’s proposed budget of P3.8 billion to P2.08 billion.

In dismissing Civil Case no. 2015-AF-029, Judge Acebido also rejected the plea for a writ of temporary restraining order and a subsequent motion for reconsideration sought by Councilor Roger Abaday and other members of the city council minority.

The matter was brought to court after Moreno rejected the city council’s approved P2.08-billion budget, and then vetoed it. The city council voted to override Moreno’s veto, and members of the minority bloc, who were then political allies of the mayor, filed a case with the mayor as a nominal respondent.

Abaday’s group had asked the court to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the approved budget but the judge denied it. The court subsequently rejected their motion for reconsideration.

Acebido stated that there was no evidence that the general appropriations ordinance had been declared invalid or illegal by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), noting that the department itself reviewed and declared it “deemed effective and operative beginning January 1, 2015.”

The court also found the Moreno administration inconsistent when it sought a supplemental budget which it asked for despite its opposition to the general appropriations ordinance.

Based on the rules, supplemental budgets can be given a green light only after the approval of general appropriations ordinances.

The court also found it “not moot and academic as the enactment of the supplemental budget ordinances has for prerequisite a valid and effective general appropriation ordinance” and “… the supplementary budget could only be enacted as supplement to a valid and binding general appropriations ordinance.”