Puentevella slams Leonardia on "hidden" budget of city

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines — City Mayor Monico Puentevella has lambasted his predecessor, now city Rep. Evelio Leonardia, for keeping him "in the dark" on the real budget of the city government, which he claimed to be saddled now by liquidity problems.

"The bigger problem is that we (city government) are still in the dark as far as our financial situation is concerned," he said upon his assumption as mayor in July, citing the debts left by Leonardia.

Puentevella, in a press statement to The Freeman yesterday, said: "It's unfortunate that despite DILG's memo discouraging or preventing LGUs from incurring more debts or loans, our City of Smiles (tagline for Bacolod) isn't smiling anymore with P1.3 billion in loans we inherited."

These loans he said were made just before the elections. "The Department of Finance knows this but somehow, it has tolerated it through the years," Puentevella said, adding that this forces the "inheritors" to borrow again to survive and do their job. "Stringent guidelines are essential, or there's no end to this. Victims are the taxpayers," he said in a press statement.

The mayor claimed there is now an "Easter egg hunt" at the City Hall because he was told there is money but they do not know where it is hidden. "As far as hidden money is concerned, we have not found it yet," he said.

In his last state of the city address (SOCA) in June, then mayor Leonardia reported about P747 million in bank deposits, surplus and other sources left by his administration. But Puentevella said those figures were as of March 31 and did not represent the real situation.

Puentevella said he found the city government has unpaid debts to the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital of P12 million, the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco) of P184 million, Bacolod City Water (Baciwa) District of P70 million and the banks amounting to P1.4 billion.

City administrator Rolando Villamor added: "Our concentration was to see that, out of P1.23 billion appropriated budget for this year, how much was spent and how much remained. And this is yet to be answered. We have documents uncovered that funds appropriated for the remaining months of this year was already used up although this was supposed to be released on a quarterly basis."

Leonardia rebuts

Leonarda, upon hearing the accusations, reacted by saying: "For so long, in spite of earlier provocation, I kept my silence because I thought people wanted peace and quiet in governance. But he (Puentevella) is getting too far. For one, we cannot understand where he is getting his figures."

The cases of Ceneco and Baciwa were about offsetting because these establishments have tax dues payable to the city government, said Leonardia adding that the Ceneco case is now even in court.

Leonardia said the people in charge of handling the hospital accounts were also wondering where Puentevella got his figures. "We never borrowed money that approximated a billion. Last June, the balance of bank loans was only P485 million and it is getting smaller," he said.

"It must be pointed out, that we are only paying about 9 percent for debt servicing, way below what is allowed by law, which is 20 percent. And let me emphasize that in all our nine years in governance, we never had a deficit. We always had a surplus, which could only mean sound financial management," Leonardia said.

The former mayor countered that Puentevella is now making excuses to justify selling the properties of the city. "This is very mysterious and extremely suspicious," he said.

"I would like Bacoleños to remember that, all these years, we have never sold major properties of the city," he said. "And here they have an administration that has only been nine days in office and wants to sell parts of Bacolod already", Leonardia added.

Puentevella and Leonardia have been political rivals for many years already, starting when they were both media practitioners, challenging each other for president of the Negros Press Club.

Their rivalry continued when both were elected councilors at the same time. Puentevella went on to become three-termer congressman, while Leonardia became three-termer mayor. Puentevella had challenged Leonardia for the mayoral race in 2010 but lost.  (FREEMAN)