WHAT ARE THE ACCOUNTABILITIES OF WHOM ON THE FLOOD CONTROL ANOMALIES?

COMMENTARY

By Hector A. Barrios, CenPEG Fellow and Trustee

October 1, 2025

Government is, of course, accountable for all its acts. The question is, how do we zero in on the accountability of specific government officials as to their role in specific acts? In this particular case, we are concerned with who is answerable for the very obvious failure of our flood infrastructure that allowed this year’s rains to cause widespread flooding and damage all over our country.

The answer of course is, the specific government officials we are looking for are those involved in the planning and implementation of the flood control projects. Therefore, to pinpoint those officials and the nature and extent of their role, we should have a fairly good idea about the planning and implementation of government projects.

Planning and implementation of operations and projects are government’s normal and perennial functions. We call it the ‘budget.’ Practically all of government’s concerns and activities are encompassed by the budget. To put it another way, we can hardly find a government concern or activity that is not in the budget.

So, in this article, let’s get a brief look at the government budgeting process, just enough to give us an idea of the specific accountabilities.

In brief the broad overall process is as follows: Unit plans are prepared respectively by the various government units, then prioritized and consolidated up the chain of command until the DBM, approved and submitted to Congress by the President and finally approved by Congress.

The key acts are:

1. NEP (National Expenditures Program) - a function of the President.

2. GAB (General Appropriations Bill) - a function of the House

3. GAA (General Appropriations Act) – a function of Congress

With this brief overall view, we can now go to the accountabilities. Not all the accountabilities (as these are numerous) but those where fraud is likely. In the case of flood control projects, these would be the following:

Accountabilities in the making of the NEP:

1) Project proposal and endorsement

2) Project design and specifications

3) Project budgetary provisions

4) Project approval

5) Budget approval (of gov’t units)

6) National budget prioritization and consolidation (by DBM)

(In effect, we are asking who proposed the project, designed and budgeted it, who endorsed it and approved it, who approved the unit budget, and who prioritized and consolidated the overall budget. These are the accountable acts and they are the accountable officials.)

Accountabilities in the making of the GAB

1) NEP approval

2) Budget or project disallowances

Accountabilities in the making of the GAA

1) GAB approval

2) Budget or project disallowances

Please note that insertions by the House, the Senate or Congress as a whole is not mentioned here at all as one of the steps in the process. That is because they are not part of the process. Insertions are expressly prohibited in Article VI, Section 5 of the Constitution thus, “The Congress may not increase the appropriations recommended by the President for the operation of the Government as specified in the budget…” Section 6 disallows Congressional transfers, “No law shall be passed authorizing transfers of appropriations ..” Thus, by whatever name the increase or transfer may be labelled – pork barrel, disbursements acceleration program, adjustment, realignment, amendment, insertion – it is prohibited. And it is not unfair to say that the Congresses that have made these budget increases have engaged in a syndicated crime.

Accountabilities in implementation and control

1) Selection of contractor

2) Quality control

3) Progress inspection

4) Disbursements control

A More Detailed Look At Flood Control Project Anomalies

Flood control anomalies are organized crimes; that is, it takes more than one official to do it.

a.) At the lowest level, only the district engineer, the project inspector, disbursing officer and contractor may be in on the scam.

b.) At a slightly higher level, it may include the project designer and budget estimator with the possible knowledge of the approving official.

c.) At an even higher level, the scam may have been planned from the start by the head of the government unit (say, a town mayor or provincial governor)

d.) At a still higher level, it may come from the level of a department head, or the DBM itself with knowledge of the President.

e.) At the highest level that we are seeing at present, it is being initiated by legislators through ‘insertions.’ (Let us look at the significance of this. While a scam may be initiated at the Legislative branch, implementation is done by the Executive branch; therefore, it is inconceivable that the latter is not involved. In short, it is likely to be a big organized scam – big in amount and big in participation.) This level of scam may be initiated by individual lawmakers but is approved by Congress as a body, and likely participated in at a high Executive branch level. Therefore, it’s not just individual officials or groups of officials but whole institutions that are turning rogue. In other words, it is becoming systemic.