Starving the Staff: When City Hall Weaponizes Red Tape

Regardless of who forgot to attach a drug test or who failed to sign a clearance, the bottom line is this: three low-level employees in Iloilo City have gone six months without a paycheck. They worked through the holidays, likely borrowed money to put food on the table for Noche Buena, and are now facing a January 12 deadline that could wipe out their back pay entirely.

This transcends mere administrative error to become a crisis of human welfare.

The conflict between Councilor Sheen Marie Mabilog and the administration of Mayor Raisa Treñas-Chu has officially spilled over, and the collateral damage is the rank-and-file staff. The City Administrator’s Office insists this is strictly about “incomplete documents” – missing NBI clearances or personal data sheets. But looking at the timeline, that defense starts to crumble.

Both Mabilog, the lone opposition councilor, and Vice Mayor Julie Grace “Love-Love” Baronda report sending letters as early as July and September 2025 regarding their CESPEDIC (Coordinated Executive-Sangguniang Panlungsod Efforts for the Development of Iloilo City) allocations. For months, they were met with silence. It was only late in the year, when the clock was running out, that the administration suddenly flagged the missing requirements.

This smells like selective strictness. As Mabilog noted, the standard practice in previous years was to sign the contracts of service first, then submit individual requirements like drug tests later. Why was the goalpost moved without clear, written notice? And why does this “strict adherence to policy” seem to hit the Vice Mayor and the opposition councilor the hardest?

We also cannot ignore the violation of the Anti-Red Tape Act (ARTA). Vice Mayor Baronda rightly cited Section 9, which mandates government offices to reply within three to seven working days. Ghosting the second-highest official in the city for three months isn’t just rude; it’s actionable malfeasance. You cannot claim Iloilo City is “business-friendly” and efficient while simultaneously letting official correspondence rot in an inbox for a quarter of the year.

Furthermore, the system itself is rigged with a perverse incentive. If these disputes aren’t resolved by the closing of the books on January 12, the unreleased legislative funds – PHP 92,000 per month per councilor – revert to the Mayor’s office as “savings.” The Executive branch effectively benefits financially from stalling the Legislative branch. That is a structural conflict of interest that needs to be dismantled.

The solution here requires two steps. First, triage the bleeding. The administration must process the papers before the January 12 cutoff. Penalize the officials if you must, but release the salaries for the staff who actually did the work. Labor laws are clear: administrative lapses do not justify withholding wages.

Second, we need a systemic overhaul. The Legislative branch needs fiscal autonomy. The Mayor should not hold the checkbook for the Council’s own staff. Until the CESPEDIC release mechanism is decoupled from the Mayor’s discretionary power, “missing documents” will continue to be a convenient weapon to starve out political dissenters.

Let’s get the paperwork fixed, but more importantly, let’s get these people paid.