Audit trails aren’t battle lines

 “YOU just dropped a bomb on City Hall.”

Sounds overly dramatic, I know. But that was exactly how a Xavier University psychology batchmate broke the silence via Facebook Messenger one fine morning last week.

I didn’t even know he was now working as a mid-level bureaucrat in one of the departments at City Hall. He predicated the “bomb” blurb with a charm offensive, asking me to stop “attacking” his employer.

Methinks only a self-absorbed nitwit would consider demands for accountability and transparency — from the very people who put them in power — as an “attack” or its petty Bisayan counterpart, “pagpangaway.”

By now, the final installment of my three-part series on the state auditors’ annual report on City Hall has been published, both in print and on the digital platforms of Gold Star Daily. And for the record, regarding my friend’s “charm offensive,” here is the context of what I told him for those in the back: My support is for the institution of City Hall. I am simply pointing out the weak parts of governance because the public deserves better.

Apparently, reading the government’s own scorecard back to them is now considered an act of war.

This brings me to the amusing speculation regarding my sources. Since the first part of the series dropped, I’ve been told whispers have been echoing through the corridors of power. “Who leaked the documents to Cong?” “Does he have a mole in the Accounting Office?” “Did a disgruntled employee slide a manila folder under his door in a dim parking garage like some cut-rate Deep Throat in a bad noir film?”

To those speculating about who may or may not have slipped me an advance copy — already stamped as officially received by both the City Council and the Mayor’s Office — of the COA findings: I’ll leave you to your paranoia. It keeps you sharp.

Maybe I have a “Deep Throat” in the executive building. Maybe I just happen to have a relative at the COA. Or maybe, just maybe, when you leave a trail of audit observations as long as the traffic on C.M. Recto Avenue, you don’t need a magnifying glass to see the mess.

Recently, a certain government flack revealed a document aimed at refuting one of the findings of public auditors. A cursory scan shows the document is dated January 17, 2025. However, City Hall received the COA’s audit report on June 27, 2025, at 12:06 pm, and the City Council received it later that same day at exactly 4:24 pm.

That would mean they have been sitting on this document for roughly five months. The first part of the three-part series I wrote was published on December 5; this flack revealed the document only this week.

Posed as a sort of “smoking gun” of deliverance, the document is short of two agencies — PhilHealth and the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) — and a month shy of a year late.

Let’s be clear: This is not personal. I don’t wake up in the morning plotting the emotional ruin of mid-level bureaucrats; their daily commute through Cagayan de Oro traffic usually handles that for me. I have better things to do, like listening to Pink Floyd or figuring out what to have for lunch.

But when you accept the mantle of public office, you surrender the right to be sensitive about your math.

This is, in fact, a civic duty. It is the obligation of every single taxpayer in this city to ask where the money went. If you order a pork chop and the waiter brings you a plate of damp repolyo, sending it back isn’t a personal attack on the waiter’s family lineage — it’s holding the establishment to the standard on the menu.

So, to my friends at City Hall: Don’t shoot the messenger just because you don’t like the message. If you don’t want “bombs” dropped on your department, stop leaving explosive discrepancies in your ledgers.

Work better. Balance the books. And for the love of god, stop acting like accountability is a personal insult. 

It’s just the rent you pay for the privilege of power.