Transparency and HR 2467

Majority Leader and Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro’s line of vision must be unique. He said that with House Resolution 2467, public access to the House members’ Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) will be easier.

“The days of tedious and expensive way of seeking copies of SALN of lawmakers are over. Requesting parties no longer have to ask the courts to issue a subpoena duces tecum; they merely have to ask and follow simple procedure provided under HR 2467,” Castro said in a statement after the House unanimously approved the resolution last week.

So what exactly is this “simple procedure” that the gentleman from Capiz is talking about?

Rule V, Section 12 of the resolution sets the guidelines in the filing of requests for SALN copies.

Request for copies shall be filed with the Office of the Secretary General using the official SALN request form. The Secretary General and the SALN Review and Compliance Committee members and its secretariat will do preliminary screening of the request, to make sure that all request justifications pass through scrutiny and that they are not covered by the limitations and prohibitions provided in the Constitution and RA 6713.

A journalist, the resolution states, needs to provide proof under oath of media affiliation and a certificate of the accreditation of a media organization. The SALN copies “must not be disclosed for any commercial purpose other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public.”

The director of the House’s Records Management Service “shall in all cases, redact or blacken” the House members’ address, names of unmarried children below 18 years old, names of business enterprise, location of real properties, among many others.

Resolution 2467 adds another later that complicates the whole procedure—the plenary. The fate of one’s request for a SALN copy will have to be decided on by the entire House.

Section 14 of the resolution states thus, “The SALN Review and Compliance Committee shall grant or deny requests for access to the filed SALNs of House Members, officers or employees, provided that access to copies of the SALNs of House Members by the public shall be referred to the House plenary for final determination.” To cover the cost of reproduction and mailing, a requesting party will be charged P300 for every SALN copy, which can only be released upon consent of the lawmaker in question.

Despite those layers of bureaucracy, Castro said HR 2467 “remains faithful to the principle of transparency. Accountability will have to be guaranteed by both the public and the SALN filers.”

But we beg to disagree. The way it appears, the whole procedure of SALN disclosure in HR 2467 does not in any way veer toward the side of transparency.