EDITORIAL - Barangay robbers

How many mayors scrutinize the expenditures of the  barangay officials in their jurisdiction, to ensure the proper use of public funds?

Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto did, and noticed an unusually large amount of declared expenditures in just one barangay, Manggahan.

After reviewing disbursement vouchers, Sotto noted that the P130 million in total annual expenditure of Manggahan was larger than the budgets of many municipalities. He wants to know how the P130 million was spent.

The mayor wondered aloud if even personal electricity and water bills as well as house rentals were charged to taxpayers by the barangay officials. “If this continues,” he said, “everything will end up being shouldered by the city government.”

Sotto particularly lamented the disbursements for wheelchairs, with no corresponding documentation that the items were actually purchased and released. “Even people who cannot walk were robbed,” he lamented.

The mayor’s concerns are valid. Barangay fund utilization has to be among the least monitored for accountability. The law gives barangay officials broad powers to raise their own funds through various activities, including collecting business clearance and parking fees as well as tolls or pass-through fees for minor roads and bridges.

Such fees, often redundant and excessive for the purpose, plus the layers of red tape in barangay processes, which facilitate the collection of grease money, have been common complaints of businessmen, whether micro, small and medium entrepreneurs or big-ticket investors.

Many barangay officials serve as political leaders of those in higher office. The village officials can be used to hinder competition when prospective investments threaten the businesses of their principals.

Empowered to raise revenues for the barangay, there are village officials who see no line between public and private funds. Parking fees, which can be double or even triple the amounts in shopping malls, don’t even have receipts, even in Metro Manila. If there are no official receipts, how can the collections be subjected to proper audit?

Instead of attracting investments that can generate jobs and downstream livelihoods, such barangay officials scare away business and discourage entrepreneurship.

And yet barangay officials have been rewarded repeatedly by their political patrons with term extensions through the one-year postponement of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections. The BSK officials have even been gifted with a four-year term, longer than that of mayors and congressmen. What did they do to deserve the longer term?

Before rewards are given, barangays should be subjected to performance audits. Vico Sotto is correct in subjecting them to tests of accountability and the judicious use of people’s money. Those found to have misused public funds must be subjected to criminal prosecution.