Around 200 participants, including mayors, vice mayors, local legislators and other government workers attended Thursday a forum spearheaded by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Negros Oriental to improve performance, cut down on time, and boost current knowledge and management of the local legislative process.
Vice Gov. Edward Mark Macias, presiding officer of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, said this is the first time in the Province’s known history that a forum such as this has been held.
One of the functions of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan is to review ordinances and resolutions passed by the component cities and municipalities, he said.
According to the Vice Governor, they at the Sangguniang Panlalawigan have observed over the past several months that many resolutions and ordinances from the different legislative councils in Negros Oriental have to be returned due to errors in procedures as well as lacking the necessary information.
This in turn causes a delay in the whole process, Macias said. “That is why we had to come up with the forum, where we have speakers from the different offices, to answer pertinent questions and concerns”.
The problem is once returned, it takes a long time before an ordinance or resolution has been reviewed and revised before it gets forwarded again to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, Macias pointed out.
Speakers from the different offices were invited to speak about and answer questions on human resource and management, budget, and most of all, on the local legislative process.
While these offices are not under the legislative arm but under the executive branch of the provincial government, they are considered the “technical arms” of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan as their expertise is needed in many instances, Vice Governor Macias said.
“We utilize them when we need to make comments, approve or disapprove certain legislation, as we are not experts and we do not claim to be experts in certain fields”, he added.
One of the objectives of Thursday’s forum is to hopefully achieve some kind of system that will hasten and fine tune the legislative processes from preparation to approval, according to Macias.
Meanwhile, Vice Governor Macias also led the launching of a web-based tool that will help legislators and other users find information on the province’s existing ordinances as well as to track documents and their current status.
The Legislative Management, Tracking and Information System website is sp.negor.gov.ph or sp.negor.us.to.
Present during the forum were some mayors, to include Neil Credo of Dauin, Bentham dela Cruz of Amlan, and Merci Goñi of Bais City, vice mayors, councilors, sanggunian secretaries and other local government officials from the different towns and cities of Negros Oriental. (PNA/JFP)
