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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Wednesday, March 29, 2017
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BACOLOD City – Monico Puentevella is no longer the mayor of this city but the Office of the President still ordered him to answer a 2015 complaint filed by an officer of a local civic movement.
Samuel Montoyo of Save Bacolod Movement, Inc. accused Puentevella of grave abuse of authority and gross neglect of duty for implementing a tax ordinance declared null and void in 2015.
Puentevella served as city mayor from 2013 to 2016.
He must submit a reply within 15 days from receipt of the order, stated Ryan Alvin Acosta, acting deputy executive secretary for legal affairs of the Office of the President, in an order dated March 9.
Montoyo had said he filed the complaint on Dec. 16, 2015 not only as a nongovernment group’s officer but also as a taxpayer.
Puentevella cannot be reached for comment as of press time.
Puentevella signed City Ordinance No. 08-14-700 in November 2014. The tax ordinance increased real property taxes (RPT) “from the rate of no less than 300 percent up to 1,600 percent,” said Montoyo.
Despite being “oppressive, confiscatory and unjust,” the ordinance was enforced, he said in his complaint.
Proxima Centauri Realty and Development Corp. and Bacolod Real Estate Development Corp. then filed separate petitions against the Puentevella administration before the Department of Justice.
They asked the Justice department to declare the ordinance unconstitutional, “[a] remedy granted under Section 187 of the Local Government Code,” said Montoyo.
On Feb. 18, 2015 the department released a resolution declaring the ordinance null and void, and “thus without any legal force and effect,” he said.
Puentevella filed a motion for reconsideration, but the Justice department denied this in a resolution dated April 7, 2015.
The then mayor “did not appeal or obviously failed to make [an] appeal [before] the Court of Appeals or the Office of the President,” Montoyo said.
Despite the finality of the Justice department’s order, “Puentevella continued to enforce and collect the RPT under the said nullified ordinance,” he stressed.
Montoyo said this act “[establishes] sufficient ground for administrative liability under Section 190 of RA (Republic Act) 7160.”
“Likewise, such administrative violation…under RA 7160, Section 190 will further prove his (Puentevella)…culpable violation of the Constitution, oppression, and undue exercise or grave abuse of authority,” said Montoyo./PN
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