Unity, change, new beginnings for Sangguniang Panlalawigan

Written by editor on 29 August 2010

Vice Governor Concepcion Lim called for unity and change in what spells
out to be a new beginning for the provincial board of Bohol.
This call was issued by the lady vice governor to the members of the
Sangguniang Panlalawigan, its legislative staff assistants and regular
employees during the opening of its strategic planning and legislation
workshop held last Wednesday and Thursday at the Bohol Plaza Resort, in
Dauis.
“Let’s be frank with each other,” VGov Lim opened and continued that unity
can only be achieved through honesty and openness so that there will be
genuine harmony in the SP.
She directed all employees to refrain from participating in politics in the
provincial sanggunian, saying that they are all in the SP to work as one for
the people of the province. She added that they should leave politics to the
politicians.
Aside from the vice governor, nine of the 13 SP members attended the said
activity, which the SP employees remarked as unprecedented, comparing
it to how the previous SP administration barely attended the same activity.
Present were Senior Board Member Dionisio Balite, Assistant Floor Leader
Godofreda Tirol, First District Board Members Abeleon Damalerio and
Venzencio Arcamo, Second District Board Members Josephine Socorro
Jumamoy and Gerardo Garcia, Third District Board Member Bienvenido
Molina, PCL-Bohol President Ramonito Torrefranca, and ABC-Bohol
President Crispina Vergara.
Lim’s sentiment was echoed during the proceedings by BM Jumamoy, who
said that there is no need for division within the SP since it should stand as
one family. She further affirmed the importance of attitude in establishing
how people relate with and respect one another.
Jumamoy observed that in the last administration that there was lack
of camaraderie between certain offices that comprise the Sangguniang
Panlalawigan. She said that it was a division that did not exist in the past
SP administrations of which she was a member.
The employees themselves spoke out of a lack of trust that they sensed
in the last SP administration since, even when there were competent staff
already in place, it often preferred to hire outsiders.
The Sanggunian is composed of the Vice Governor’s Office, the offices of
the Board Members, the Office of the SP Secretary, and under the latter,

the Provincial Library.
One with the executive agenda
“We will change what we see is undesirable,” the vice governor also
declared in her message. And in the same breath, the vice governor
called for the legislative body to “cooperate with the province’s executive
department in pursuing its development agenda.”
Thereafter, following a presentation and forum on the provincial
development and physical framework plan, it was proposed that the
provincial sanggunian adopt for itself the executive development agenda
through an ordinance so that the provincial government may more fully
pursue as one the comprehensive development agenda that is articulated
in the acronym HEAT Bohol, through the strategies of LIFE HELPS.
HEAT stands for Health and Sanitation, Education and Technology,
Agriculture and Food Security, and Tourism and Livelihood. LIFE HELPS
stands for the strategies of Livelihood and Tourism, Infrastructure, Food,
Education, Health, Environment, Leadership Development, Peace and
Order, Sports and Youth Development.
Legislative Tracking System
Yet another subject that came up during the strategic planning was the
legislative tracking system, or LTS, which many said to have deteriorated
from the time when Gov. Edgar Chatto was still the vice governor. It had
then been hailed as ahead of its time and was made a model for the LTS of
other provinces.
BM Tirol inquired on what is causing a bottleneck in the province’s LTS.
“If I can track it from my own office, there would have been no need for
paper exchange,” she continued, hinting on the SP’s aim of paperless
legislation, an environmental approach to legislation which seeks to
maximize technology and minimize the use of paper and other resources
which may be depleted.
The SP of Agusan del Sur, one of the LGUs which had come to Bohol to
study its LTS, now boasts of its online paperless legislation.
SP Secretary Bonifacio Quirog Jr. clarified that what the SP has at present
is not an LTS but essentially merely a records retrieval system, where
one must know beforehand the date, number, and subject matter of the
legislation being sought.
One other limitation of the current system is that if one user opens a folder,
other users of the network cannot open the same folder.
Quirog himself commented that, for now, to meet the immediate needs of
the legislators, it would be better for the SP to revert to the old LTS and
make updates from there instead of continuing to work with the current