Baguio City Representative Mauricio Domogan is pushing for transparency and accountability in the deliberations of the General Appropriations Act.
Domogan, over the week, filed House Bill 4801 or the “Budget Bicameral Transparency and Accountability Act” which seeks to push for greater transparency and accountability in the national budget process.
The bill takes direct aim at the long-controversial practice of “insertions” made during the closed-door sessions of the Bicameral Conference Committee.
Domogan, in his explanatory note, stresses that the national budget is the “lifeblood of governance” and its appropriations must “withstand the test of legality, transparency, and fairness”.
HB 4801 seeks to enshrine in statute what Supreme Court jurisprudence has repeatedly declared that the Bicameral Conference Committee’s power is to reconcile and harmonize and not to “legislate anew”.
The bill defines “insertions” as appropriations or provisions introduced during the bicameral conference committee proceedings that were not present in either the House or Senate version of the bill.
Under Section 4 of the proposed Act, the committee is strictly prohibited from inserting or introducing new appropriations, provisions, or items not found in either the House or Senate budget versions; altering the nature, purpose, or beneficiary of an appropriation in a way that is inconsistent with either original version, and including matters unrelated to the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Domogan argued that unauthorized insertions are evasion of the constitutional mandate that all laws must pass three readings in each chamber.
To ensure the public can effectively monitor the final budget, the bill mandates strict transparency measures under Section 5 which states that “the Bicameral Conference Committee report must now include a comparative matrix that explicitly shows the differences and reconciliations among the House version, the Senate version, and the final bicameral version.
A complete report must be published on the official websites of both the House of Representatives and the Senate at least three days before ratification by both chambers.
Domogan said the measure is not just an exercise in technical discipline, but a “call to leadership” and a mechanism for accountability.
The comebacking solon emphasizes that this measure is crucial in declaring that “governance must be open, decisions must be accountable, and the national budget must truly be the people’s budget”. NLMonitor
