Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte hailed newly confirmed Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Juan Victor Remulla for supporting calls in the Congress for a review of the Local Government Code (LGC) to strengthen the fiscal autonomy of local governments.
Earlier, Remulla also expressed the need to streamline the glut of bureaucratic orders that he himself believes only complicates the work of local executives.
Villafuerte, House majority leader for the House contingent’s Commission on Appointments, said that when asked during his confirmation hearing at the Commission on Appointments on whether he supports measures to strengthen local autonomy through the issuance of new DILG orders or proposed amendatory laws in the Congress to the LGC, Remulla said he “totally agrees.”
Remulla recalled that during the recent streak of six cyclones, Villafuerte’s Camarines Sur was among severe tropical storm Kristine’s hardest-hit areas, and the local government was the first to respond to the affected people, “ but after two days your resources started to dwindle and if you had more resources that are at your disposal, then responding to such emergencies would have been easier. So, I fully support that.”
When Villafuerte asked Remulla what he intends to do with the huge number of memorandum circulars (MCs) that the DILG issue for local government compliance, the latter said that when he was Cavite governor, he would receive MCs that “further complicate our work.”
