‘Corrected’ Baguio Charter set for Marcos signature

THE MANSION Baguio City, a tourist destination, is also home to The Mansion, the presidential summer house, viewed here in December 2024 from Wright Park. Baguio is an independent city but its revised modern Charter requires its ordinances to be approved by Benguet province. Corrections to the Charter are now on the desk of President Marcos. —NEIL CLARK ONGCHANGCO

BAGUIO CITY—A House bill that proposed to amend errors in the modern Baguio City Charter has been transmitted to President Marcos, the presidential legislative liaison office informed the city government recently.

Among the substantial corrections House Bill No. 7406 would introduce to Republic Act No. 11689 is the repeal of a provision that requires Baguio City to transmit all its ordinances, policies and programs to the Benguet provincial board for approval, which was protested by city officials since Baguio is a highly urbanized city independent from Benguet. The revised Charter of Baguio, which replaced the original 1909 Charter, lapsed into law in 2022.

Component city

Legislative Officer Eulogio Sabban, in a March 17 notification to Mayor Benjamin Magalong and Vice Mayor Faustino Olowan, asked the city government to comment on HB 7406 before Mr. Marcos acts on the measure or allows it to lapse into law on April 14.

Section 23, No. 4, in RA 11689 would reduce the highly urbanized mountain resort city into to a component city of Benguet if it would be required to get the province’s approval for its laws and measures.

Olowan has described this error as the “katangahan” (stupid act) and a “sloppy mistake” by the previous Congress, when the city council discussed Sabban’s letter at its session on Monday.

Mistakes

HB 7406 also proposed to repeal the controversial Section 55 of the modern Charter, which excluded the Camp John Hay Reservation from the Baguio Townsite Reservation. Many lawyers, political leaders and scholars interpreted this provision as a way to remove the former American military base land and its commercial district from the city’s jurisdiction.

The same provision expanded, through legislation, the bounds of the former John Hay Air Station from 570 hectares, as stipulated by Republic Act No. 7227 (the Bases Conversion and Development Act of 1992), to a 625-ha forest reserve, said Councilor Jose Molintas, who chairs the council’s Committee on Public Protection and Safety, Peace and Order, and the Committee on Laws, Human Rights and Justice.

HB 7406 also removed the John Hay Management Corp., a subsidiary of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), as a member of a special committee on lands to address Baguio’s land disposition issues, including ancestral lands.

But while the city council will not “express vigorous objection” to these corrections, Olowan and other councilors said HB 7406 does not satisfactorily address many other mistakes in the modern Charter.

Review, revise

Councilors Molintas and Peter Fianza said President Marcos should be informed that Baguio residents prefer to review and revise the entire modern Charter and draft a new city Charter that addresses the city’s current problems.

Fianza, an Ibaloy lawyer, laid down a matrix that Magalong transmitted last year to Sen. JV Ejercito, chair of the Senate Committee on Local Government, who sponsored HB 7406 in the Upper House.

Magalong was concerned about the absence in HB 7406 of a provision that grants Baguio all the proceeds from the sale of townsite lands, which it would use to finance a joint townsite sales committee with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said City Legal Officer Althea Alberto.

IP rights

This provision was previously specified in the 1909 Charter: “All moneys received from the sale of public lands within the city of Baguio shall accrue to and be deposited in the treasury of the city of Baguio, and all the fees and charges accruing within said city under general law which but for this Charter would accrue to a province shall accrue to and be deposited in the treasury of the city of Baguio.”

Councilors Arthur Allad-iw and Isabelo Cosalan Jr. said the Charter should allow Baguio’s indigenous Filipinos to have the same rights, benefits and safeguards granted to other indigenous peoples (IP) in the Philippines.

Baguio’s Ibaloys are currently excluded from Republic Act No. 8371, or the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997, that excludes Baguio from its coverage.

The Charter can also incorporate the 19 conditions set by Baguio when it endorsed the commercialization of Camp John Hay in 1994, said Councilor Betty Lourdes Tabanda, who sponsored City Resolution No. 362, series of 1994.