By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent
MAYOR Oscar Moreno had eight city hall checks amounting to P79 million written to him in early 2016 to legally outsmart the then Padayon Pilipino-dominated city council and to ensure that the money was spent for the health insurance premiums of some 75 thousand people here.
Moreno’s lawyer Dale Bryan Mordeno said the mayor did that because the city council then was bent on preventing his administration from providing health insurance coverage to as many people as possible.
The explanation came days after Moreno was ordered by Malacañang to answer former Taglimao barangay chairman William Guialani’s complaint that the eight city hall checks showed Moreno as the payee.
Mordeno said the mayor used his discretion to make sure that the funds would go to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp..
“Discretion man kana sa mayor aron ang maong kantidad segurado gyud nga mabayad sa Philhealth,” he said.
The funds, according to Mordeno, were appropriated in the 2015 budget of city hall. With the checks already under the mayor’s name, it prevented the funds from reverting to city hall’s general appropriation of 2016.
“It was December 2015, and Mayor Moreno made sure that the funds would no longer return to the general fund of 2016. Because if the funds went back to the general fund, then he would be needing another budget appropriation which the city council then would not have granted,” Mordeno said.
He said Moreno merely “made use of the allocation that would have resulted in unexpended surplus and nonenewal of the Philhealth beneficiaries.”
The lawyer said the act of Moreno also benefited city health centers and improved maternal care and delivery services.
Mayor Moreno laughed off the complaint, saying that the former barangay chairman based it on a superseded document from the Commission on Audit.
Moreno said the basis of the complaint was a document on the findings of a team of government auditors.
According to Moreno, what was omitted in the complaint was that city hall already gave the Commission on Audit an explanation during an “exit conference,” and that the Commission accepted the reason and cleared city hall.
Moreno said, “Ingon ang audit team nga implemented na — meaning OK na, wala nay problima… Dili man puwedi nga ang iyang basihan lang sa iyang reklamo, kadtong findings sa audit office memorandum sa COA kay kanang finding sa audit office memorandum, wala pa may among tubag nia-na.”
He said a similar complaint was filed by one of Guialani’s associates before the COA. The complainant, he said, was informed by COA that the complaint had no basis, and that it was already explained by city hall.
Meanwhile, Atty. Mordeno said he was preparing to submit the mayor’s verified answer to Guialani’s complaint to the Office of the President.
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