Cebu City’s 2025 annual budget: Rama warns vs insertions

MANILA, Philippines — With Cebu City Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia taking over as local chief executive to serve his remaining term, dismissed mayor Michael Rama has cautioned the current administration, stressing the move to draft a new annual budget should exclude allocations for the 2025 elections.

He said this last Thursday, when he called a press conference to answer questions related to his dismissal and perpetual disqualification ordered by the Office of the Ombudsman, and other issues.

Among those that the reporters asked him is the P17-billion annual budget that Garcia proposed for 2025.

“Karon kung nagbuhat na silag bag-ong budget, para na next year. Kung magbuhat sila og budget para election, gaba na gyud na,” Rama said.

He, however, did not explain what the insinuation exactly meant, except by saying that the P25 billion that the city came up with for the 2024 annual budget, when he was still mayor, was a more “realistic” budget compared to the previous year of 2023.

Prior to the approval of the P25-billion annual budget for 2024, though, the Rama-led administration actually proposed a P100-billion annual budget, an amount that was double that of the P50 billion Rama wanted for 2023.

While he got his wish and the City Council approved the P50 billion in 2023, the city councilors slashed the P100 billion Rama proposed as annual budget for 2024 to just P25 billion.

Garcia had announced last week that he had officially endorsed to the City Council for approval a 2025 annual budget of just P17 billion, or P8 billion less than the current budget.

To Rama, however, he justified his previous budget proposals as “bare” and “transparent.”

“Balanced, adequate, responsive, equitable,” he said, enumerating what he said were the characteristics of his proposed budgets in the past.

Rama said that under his administration, he had lobbied for a budget that supported his “City Hall at Your Doorstep” concept, which he said meant that the homes must be the direct beneficiaries of City Hall services.

He reiterated what he had always wanted, which is the increase of the city’s real property tax, because higher tax rates would generate more revenue for the City and therefore more funds for government projects.

“Naa man tay kwarta. We will have money. Pamayad lang mo sa intong taxes. Let the revision be implemented correctly,” Rama said.

Also, as an unrelated topic, he warned the city government from acceding to the request for tax exemptions for Cebu Provincial Government lots.

“Because that is treason to the Cebuanos in the city of Cebu…. Ayaw gyud mo’g sugot, kay mabalik gani ko, dili gyud ko mosugot,” he said without providing details.

In the same press conference, Rama’s camp expressed confidence on his return to the Cebu City Hall, citing the “invalidity” of the dismissal from service order, allegedly because Rama is yet to get a copy of the decision.

To recall, the Office of the Ombudsman, last Oct. 2, ordered Rama dismissed from service and perpetually disqualified from holding any public office, after finding him guilty of nepotism and grave misconduct over the hiring of his two brothers-in-law in City Hall.

Aside from the cancellation of his eligibility, the Ombudsman also ordered the forfeiture of Rama’s retirement benefits, except for accrued leave credits, and perpetual disqualification for reemployment in government service.

This came after Rama was also placed under a six-month preventive suspension in May along with then city administrator Collin Rosell and six others over the City Government’s failure to pay four regular employees their salaries and other receivables for 10 months.

Because of the preventive suspension, then Vice Mayor Garcia assumed as the acting mayor starting on May 10, which means Rama could return to City Hall already on Nov. 11, if not for the Oct. 2 dismissal order of the Ombudsman.

Last Thursday, however, Atty. Ernesto “Estong” Rama, one of Rama’s legal counsels, told reporters during the same press conference that among their basis in believing he could return as mayor is that Rama was elected by the people as the city mayor.

“Kanang ni assume karon, does he have the mandate of the Cebuanos? He does not have…. Mao na among legal basis,” Ernesto said.

Mikel Rama, Rama’s son and one of his legal counsels, also said that legal decisions such as that of the Ombudsman’s do not corresponds to immediate execution and implementation.

Mikel said that there is supposed to be an instruction for the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) for the implementation of the order, and other endorsements, with the decision serving as the last attachment.

“Pangutan-a naa ba ning mga papela, kami wala mi kita,” he said.