ACORD VS ZAMORA GR 144256

ALTERNATIVE CENTER FOR ORGANIZATIONAL REFORMS AND DEVELOPMENT, INC., VS. ZAMORA

G.R. No. 144256

Subject: Public Corporation

Doctrine: Automatic release of IRA

Facts:

Pres. Estrada, pursuant to Sec 22, Art VII mandating the Pres to submit to Congress a budget of expenditures within 30 days before the opening of every regular session, submitted the National Expenditures program for FY 2000. The President proposed an IRA of P121,778,000,000. This became RA 8760, “AN ACT APPROPRIATING FUNDS FOR THE OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES FROM JANUARY ONE TO DECEMBER THIRTY-ONE, TWO THOUSAND, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES” also known as General Appropriations Act (GAA) for the Year 2000. It provides under the heading “ALLOCATIONS TO LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS” that the IRA for local government units shall amount to P111,778,000,000”.

In another part of the GAA, under the heading “UNPROGRAMMED FUND,” it is provided that an amount of P10,000,000,000 (P10 Billion), apart from the P111,778,000,000 mentioned above, shall be used to fund the IRA, which amount shall be released only when the original revenue targets submitted by the President to Congress can be realized based on a quarterly assessment to be conducted by certain committees which the GAA specifies, namely, the Development Budget Coordinating Committee, the Committee on Finance of the Senate, and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives.

Thus, while the GAA appropriates P111,778,000,000 of IRA as Programmed Fund, it appropriates a separate amount of P10 Billion of IRA under the classification of Unprogrammed Fund, the latter amount to be released only upon the occurrence of the condition stated in the GAA.

On August 22, 2000, a number of NGOs and POs, along with 3 barangay officials filed with this Court the petition at bar, for Certiorari, Prohibition and Mandamus With Application for Temporary Restraining Order, against respondents then Executive Secretary Ronaldo Zamora, then Secretary of the Department of Budget and Management Benjamin Diokno, then National Treasurer Leonor Magtolis-Briones, and the Commission on Audit, challenging the constitutionality of provision XXXVII (ALLOCATIONS TO LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS) referred to by petitioners as Section 1, XXXVII (A), and LIV (UNPROGRAMMED FUND) Special Provisions 1 and 4 of the GAA (the GAA provisions)

Petitioners contend that the said provisions violates the LGUs autonomy by unlawfully reducing the IRA allotted by 10B and by withholding its release by placing the same under “Unprogrammed funds”. Although the effectivity of the Year 2000 GAA has ceased, this Court shall nonetheless proceed to resolve the issues raised in the present case, it being impressed with public interest. Petitioners argue that the GAA violated the constitutional mandate of automatically releasing the IRAs when it made its release contingent on whether revenue collections could meet the revenue targets originally submitted by the President, rather than making the release automatic.

ISSUE: WON the subject GAA violates LGUs fiscal autonomy by not automatically releasing the whole amount of the allotted IRA.

HELD:

Article X, Section 6 of the Constitution provides:

SECTION 6. Local government units shall have a just share, as determined by law, in the national taxes which shall be automatically released to them.

Petitioners argue that the GAA violated this constitutional mandate when it made the release of IRA contingent on whether revenue collections could meet the revenue targets originally submitted by the President, rather than making the release automatic. Respondents counterargue that the above constitutional provision is addressed not to the legislature but to the executive, hence, the same does not prevent the legislature from imposing conditions upon the release of the IRA.

Respondents thus infer that the subject constitutional provision merely prevents the executive branch of the government from “unilaterally” withholding the IRA, but not the legislature from authorizing the executive branch to withhold the same. In the words of respondents, “This essentially means that the President or any member of the Executive Department cannot unilaterally, i.e., without the backing of statute, withhold the release of the IRA.”

As the Constitution lays upon the executive the duty to automatically release the just share of local governments in the national taxes, so it enjoins the legislature not to pass laws that might prevent the executive from performing this duty. To hold that the executive branch may disregard constitutional provisions which define its duties, provided it has the backing of statute, is virtually to make the Constitution amendable by statute – a proposition which is patently absurd. If indeed the framers intended to allow the enactment of statutes making the release of IRA conditional instead of automatic, then Article X, Section 6 of the Constitution would have been worded differently.

Since, under Article X, Section 6 of the Constitution, only the just share of local governments is qualified by the words “as determined by law,” and not the release thereof, the plain implication is that Congress is not authorized by the Constitution to hinder or impede the automatic release of the IRA.

In another case, the Court held that the only possible exception to mandatory automatic release of the IRA is, as held in Batangas:

…if the national internal revenue collections for the current fiscal year is less than 40 percent of the collections of the preceding third fiscal year, in which case what should be automatically released shall be a proportionate amount of the collections for the current fiscal year. The adjustment may even be made on a quarterly basis depending on the actual collections of national internal revenue taxes for the quarter of the current fiscal year.

This Court recognizes that the passage of the GAA provisions by Congress was motivated by the laudable intent to “lower the budget deficit in line with prudent fiscal management.” The pronouncement in Pimentel, however, must be echoed: “[T]he rule of law requires that even the best intentions must be carried out within the parameters of the Constitution and the law. Verily, laudable purposes must be carried out by legal methods.”

WHEREFORE, the petition is GRANTED. XXXVII and LIV Special Provisions 1 and 4 of the Year 2000 GAA are hereby declared unconstitutional insofar as they set apart a portion of the IRA, in the amount of P10 Billion, as part of the UNPROGRAMMED FUND.