Local government units can hope to expand significantly their financial and logistical resources, and push local economic development more strongly if the 2018 Supreme Court’s so-called “Mandanas Ruling” becomes a mandatory statute.
The Mandanas ruling stipulates that LGU internal revenue allotments should come from all national taxes as contemplated under the 1991 Local Government Code and not from just the taxes collected by the BIR from within the LGU jurisdictions, as was the usual practice.
Philippine Councilors League Bicol Regional chair Jesciel Richard Salceda, who is campaigning for the PCL national chairmanship, has vowed to push for the “constitutionalization” of the Mandanas Ruling, should he win as their league’s national chairman.
A three term councilor of Polangui, Albay and their local league’s representative to the Albay Provincial Board, Salceda said he will work out measures to help make the Mandanas Ruling a law or enshrined in the Constitution, to ensure that LGUs will continue receiving their ‘just share’ of the IRA.
A graduate of Yale University, he noted that in its 2018 decision the High Court ruled that LGUs should receive bigger IRA shares and that the LGC provision limiting to 40-percent their IRA shares does not specify that the revenue base shall be taxes alone from LGU jurisdictions.
The Mandanas ruling will increase the IRA base to P354 billion in 2022, P382 billion in 2023, P420 billion in 2024, and P466 billion in 2025. He said the IRA sharing between the national government and LGUs has to be “finally put into law, institutionalized, something the LGUs ardently need for their economic empowerment.”
The young Salceda is a nephew of Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, House Ways and Means Committee chair.
His advocacies and reform agenda have won strong support and endorsements from PCL’s 17,000 members and leaders, following his campaign tour and meetings with league leaders in key provinces.
Should he become PCL national chair, Salceda said his agenda include, among others, PCL’s involvement in crafting amendments to the Constitution and representation in Regional Development Councils, term extension of elective LGU officials and congressmen, and measures pushing LGU initiatives on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and local economic development.
“It is high time the league’s strength and role in nation-building be utilized to attain the country’s desired inclusive economic growth, and for local legislators to exercise their role as modernizing agents of society in pushing for constitutional change that fortifies the role of LGUS in pursuing local economic development,” he stressed.
Salceda also said he will work for a financially strong and stable PCL.
“We should build the PCL as a fiscally sustainable institution that would be an instrument of communities in prompting positive changes in the lives of ordinary people and as a reliable partner of the national government,” he added.