It’s not even the season for budget hearings anymore but here comes a timely reminder for City Hall department heads to watch their mouths.
City Administrator Lucelle Mercado issued a memo reminding them of a standing 2012 order by Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama for them to secure his permission before attending Cebu City Council sessions or hearings.
The memo is official-speak for a gag order, no less. To protect who?
Councilor Sisinio Andales who posted a copy of the “reminder” memo on his Facebook page flagged it as a stab at the transparency policy of City Hall.
To recall, the origin of this memo was the tense budget hearings held months after Rama broke away from his former allies of the Bando Osmena-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK).
No longer on friendly terms, he issued the order days after he ordered a walkout from the council budget hearings.
So what’s prompting the return of the shield?
There’s been a flurry of executive sessions called by the City Council, where the balance of power between BO-PK and Team Rama shifts ever so slightly from one to the other, depending on the issue.
Many of them have provoked questions, valid ones, about how decisions are made on City Hall present and future transactions.
There’s the P1.5 billion new Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) project, still awaiting a final bidding, after a controversial disqualification of the lowest bidder.
Some pesky councilors wanted to know why a failure of bidding was suddenly declared by the mayor last December when the second lowest bidder was still being evaluated. They summoned the city engineer and members of the Bids and Awards Committee to shed light.
When the overhauled BAC starts to do a re-bidding — will criteria for builders be changed next? — expect non-Rama councilors to be asking questions again.
Then there’s a new proposal to secure a P120 million loan for the CCMC in order to qualify for a bigger World Bank grant to cover 90 percent of the project cost. Again, this has prompted another call for an executive session where department heads will be asked to answer questions.
Let’s not forget the series of audit memos which don’t give a flattering view of City Hall’s fiscal management.
All very inconvenient, even irritating for City Hall’s executive department.
But is a policy to centralize all answers with the mayor and require prior permission to speak, the best way to build public trust? If department heads know their job, they are in the best position to answer queries head on. Silencing them won’t stop councilors from asking pointed questions in public. Who needs protection from inconvenient questions anyway?
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