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CEBU CITY, Philippines - The fight over cityhood status isn’t over yet.
Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas of the 1st district yesterday said the 16 cities in danger of losing their new status will seek reconsideration of the Supreme Court’s (SC) unprecedented decision reverting them to municipalities.
He said new cities will retain their status until the SC resolves a motion for reconsideration to be filed soon.
The cities have 15 days to file the motion after receiving a copy of the court decision. Each city will file its own motion because the cities have separate charters.
Until then, he said, the status quo should be maintained.
Southern Cebu cities of Carcar and Naga in Gullas’ district are affected by Tuesday’s court ruling. So is Bogo City in the north.
Gullas said he was confident of their motion for reconsideration because the High Tribunal reversed itself in some cases in the past.
He noted the tight vote on the decision – 7 to 5 with 2 abstentions. If only one justice changes his mind, it would shift the tide in the cities’ favor.
“Status quo for now. Everything depends on on how soon the Supreme Court resolves the motion for reconsideration,” confirmed Pedro Noval Jr., regional director of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG).
He said the SC decision was not yet final and executory.
“It is part of the (legal) process that the adverse party still has time to file a motion for reconsideration,” he said.
Noval anticipated the issue will “drag” on because the court decision was unprecedented: this is the first time that newly created cities were ordered to revert back to its municipal status.
Congressman Gullas noted the absurd consequences of a sudden demotion of the cities.
The new cities already included new items in their local budgets after opening new offices like the schools division and prosecutor's office. Their city councils also passed resolutions and ordinances dealing with new contracts.
“The Department of Budget and Management allowed (salary) items to be given to these cities. What will happen to these? Fiscals have been appointed as well as the school's division superintendents. Don’t tell me they are just going to lose their jobs or reimburse the payroll they received,” the congressman said.
He recalled that the SC had respected the decision of Congress several times before. He cited the decision of then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. in the Mariano vs Comelec case where the High Court said it could not “substitute the wisdom of Congress.”
But if the SC upholds its earlier decision, cities will revert back to their municipal status, said Noval of the DILG.
These towns will be asked to “credit” the excess in their share of the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) which they collected in 2008 to their receivables in the succeeding years.
Newly created offices will be scrapped and their personnel will have to be absorbed in other municipal government offices.
Mayors Celestino Martinez Jr. of Bogo, Valdemar Chiong of Naga and Mario Patricio Barcenas of Carcar lamented the negative impact on proposed projects in their areas if their city status is revoked and their IRA is reduced.
After they became cities, Bogo's IRA share rose to P180 million, up from P60 million. Naga's IRA increased from P66 million to P188 million.
The SC on Wednesday declared as unconstitutional the laws elevating 16 towns to cities in 2007, saying the cities could not be exempted from the cityhood requirements of the Local Government Code, such as income level and population.
In a decision penned by Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, the Supreme Court said cityhood laws could not claim they were exempted from Republic Act 9009, which took effect in June 2001 or six years before the cityhood laws were passed.
RA 9009 amended Section 450 of the Local Government Code by increasing the annual income requirement for conversion of a municipality into a city from P20 million to P100 million.
“The Constitution is clear. The creation of local government units must follow the criteria established in the Local Government Code and not in any other law,” the high court said.
It upheld the petition of the League of Cities of the Philippines (LCP), which argued that the “wholesale conversion” of municipalities into cities would reduce the share of existing cities in the IRA, since more cities would share the same amount of internal revenue set aside for all cities.
Other affected cities were Baybay in Leyte province; Catbalogan in Samar; Tandag in Surigao Del Sur; Borongan in Eastern Samar; Tayabas in Quezon; Lamitan in Basilan; Tabuk in Kalinga; Bayugan in Agusan Del Sur; Batac in Ilocos Norte; Mati in Davao Oriental; Guihulngan in Negros Oriental; Cabadbaran in Agusan Del Norte; and El Salvador in Misamis Oriental.
Gullas admitted that the cityhood bills of 13 of the 16 towns were filed before the end of the 11th Congress in 2001 when the income requirement for a city was still pegged at P20 million.
He said the cities of Carcar, Naga and Bogo were part of this batch.
Gullas recalled that he was House majority floor leader during the 11th Congress. Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. filed a bill increasing the income requirement to P100 million, excluding IRA share, for cityhood status of the towns toward the end of the 11th Congress.
It was agreed among the legislators that Pimentel's bill would be passed into law provided that all bills converting towns into cities that had not been acted upon by Senate would be exempted.
At that time, the Senate was hearing the impeachment case against former president Joseph Estrada who was accused of receiving more than P500 million from illegal gambling operations and kickbacks from the tobacco excise tax.
Bogo Mayor Martinez said Bogo’s cityhood application was submitted before 2001 so therefore Bogo should not be made to comply with the new requirements of a higher income bracket.
Wife Clavel, who was then 4th district representative, filed the bill during the term of president Fidel Ramos from 1992 to 1998.
Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia said she sympathized with the cities of Bogo, Naga and Carcar but “we will have also have to respect the SC decision.”
“I feel the pain of the (affected) cities, but they are always welcome to rejoin Cebu province. We will continue to help them,” she said.
She said the provincial government continued helping Bogo, Naga and Carcar even after they became cities in 2007. Since their conversion into component cities, the provincial government no longer collected a share of their real property tax collections.
“But we continue to include them in our programs. We continue to asphalt their roads,” Garcia said.
The League of Cities of the Philippines hailed the Supreme Court ruling.
“We thank the Supreme Court for this decision which will benefit our 20 members,” LCP president and Mandaluyong City Mayor Benjamin “Benhur” Abalos said in a telephone interview.
Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas, LCP chair, said the ruling upheld the law. “It means that the position of the LCP was correct all the while.”
Maasin City Mayor Malone Samaco was elated by the Supreme Court's decision.
“Of course we are happy with the decision because some P27 million in IRA (Internal Revenue Allocation) shares taken away with the creation of these cities will be given back to us," Samaco said in a telephone interview. /with a report from Correspondent Jhunnex Napallacan and Inquirer
