NEW evidence has surfaced to bolster the charge that the hastily approved bill splitting Camarines Sur into two provinces was defective and that the authors then resorted to what critics have dubbed “dagdag-bawas legislation” in a bid to fix the legal infirmities in the version that the House of Representatives had submitted to the Senate.
In a letter to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Camarines Sur, Nationalist People’s Coalition Rep. George Arnaiz of Negros Oriental, chairman of the Committee on Local Government, admitted that House Bill (HB) 4820 contained “inadvertent errors emanat[ing] from the template used in the preparation of the bill,” but added that his panel had subsequently introduced the “necessary corrections” or amendments and deletions to the House-approved measure after it had been transmitted to the Senate.
Arnaiz wrote the letter a month ago to lawyer Joselito Figuracion, Sangguniang Panlalawigan secretary, in response to the adoption by the Camarines Sur provincial board of Sangguniang Panlalawigan Resolution 386, which asked the House leadership to confirm whether HB 4820 really seeks to grant to the proposed province of Nueva Camarines certain inordinate powers that are not currently enjoyed by other local governments.
“Anent your SP Resolution 386… please be informed that there was no intention on the part of the committee to grant powers and functions analogous with those granted to municipalities and thereby empowering the proposed Province of Nueva Camarines to exercise inordinate powers and authorities not conferred to other provinces,” Arnaiz told Figuracion.
“All those provisions in question were plain inadvertent errors,” Arnaiz admitted in the letter. “After a thorough research, the Committee Secretariat found out that the inadvertent errors emanated from the template used in the preparation of the bill as filed by Deputy Speaker [Arnulfo] Fuentebella and also the substitute bill prepared by the committee secretariat.”
HB 4820 critics, like Camarines Sur Gov. Luis Raymund Villafuerte Jr., have called on the Senate to dump the Fuentebella bill because the House-approved version has over two dozen provisions that clothes the local government of the proposed Nueva Camarines with the same regulatory and taxation powers that the Local Government Code had vested exclusively in city and municipal governments.
Before writing the Camarines Sur Sanggunian, Arnaiz and Fuentebella sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Local Government, chaired by Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., seeking to delete from HB 4820 one entire section seeking to create the new office of the civil registrar and three paragraphs seeking to grant to the provincial government the powers to regulate the use of commercial lands along with buildings like sauna or massage parlors, hotels and restaurants, bars and liquor stores, bars and billiard halls—powers already invested in city and municipal governments.
(Zaff Somerin)
