Set up to fail at grassroots

We are more than halfway through 2026, and 63 of the 180 barangays in Iloilo City are still running on financial fumes. The youth councils (Sangguniang Kabataan or SK) have it even worse, considering 107 of them do not have an approved spending plan.

When the joint committee of the city council released its findings this week, the knee-jerk reaction was to blame lazy local officials. Read the actual report, however, and a much messier systemic failure emerges. We are setting up our grassroots leaders to fail and then acting shocked when they do.

First, the paperwork. The national government expects barangay officials to craft complex ecological profiles and execute problem tree analysis. But this is barangay governance, not a corporate board meeting. Forcing these highly technical methodologies on local officials guarantees paralysis. Most of them do not have the technical staff to support this level of planning. It is no wonder there is constant confusion between the long-term Barangay Development Plan and the Annual Investment Program.

Add to this the toxic reality of local political transitions. The committee found that incoming officials are frequently left flying blind. Outgoing administrators routinely fail to turn over financial records or properties. Successors are forced to manually reconstruct years of incomplete financial reports just to secure a Certified Statement of Income. It is petty, it weaponizes bureaucracy, and it stalls the incoming budget entirely.

Faced with corporate-level paperwork and sabotaged records, desperate barangay officials take the easy way out: outsourcing.

This is where institutional failure becomes dangerous. The committee flagged a serious concern about private contractors stepping in to prepare these financial documents. In exchange for their services, some of these external providers are holding onto vital government records. We are talking about private citizens keeping barangay checkbooks, passbooks, and even logging into PhilGEPS accounts. It effectively hands over control of public funds to unaccountable third parties, delaying liquidations and making a mockery of financial transparency.

The ultimate victims in this bureaucratic traffic jam are the youth. Because the SK budget is legally pegged to 10 percent of the barangay general fund, their money is held hostage by the delays of the parent council. If a barangay operates on a budget of PHP 15,000,000, that means PHP 1,500,000 meant for youth sports, mental health programs, and capital outlays is frozen. Operating on a reenacted budget means no new programs at all.

The recurring advice has always been to issue more directives or hold another weekend seminar. That does not work. The proposed Barangay-SK Budgetary Reform Ordinance is probably the first realistic solution we have seen in years.

It pitches practical, simplified planning templates tailored to actual barangay needs. More importantly, it pushes for a Barangay Academy to provide consistent, one-on-one coaching instead of generalized lectures.

We do not need to lower our standards for local governance. We just need to stop burying our grassroots leaders in red tape they were not trained to navigate. We also need to start holding those who hijack public records fully accountable, whether they are bitter ex-officials or shady contractors.