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Kaohsiung mayor laments budget cuts
DEBT WORRY: KMT officials said the special municipality could not borrow so much money while it was running one of the largest debts among the nation’s regions
By Wang Jung-hsiang and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The Greater Kaohsiung Council’s recent slashing of 4.7 percent of the municipal government’s annual income, or NT$5.7 billion (US$188 million), was “heart-rending,” Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday.
Chen made the remarks after her city administrative team on Friday offered a public apology to Greater Kaohsiung residents for what they called its failure to stop Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) city councilors from slashing the city government’s income and expenditure for this year by NT$5.7 billion and NT$5.4 billion respectively.
This year’s estimated total budget for the city stood at NT$135 billion, including NT$3.1 billion earmarked for principal payback.
The city council on Thursday held its plenary sessions in the hope of finishing the reviews — Greater Kaohsiung is the only municipality that had not finished its budgeting before the Lunar New Year holiday.
The pan-blue camp holds the majority in the council and used it to forcibly push through the budget cuts, the city government said.
The cuts claimed 4.7 percent of the city’s annual income, including NT$2.8 billion from the average land rights fund, NT$1.65 billion from the sale of non-public used land owned by the government, NT$740 million for a planned yacht manufacturing area and NT$280 million in event funding, the municipal government said.
The city council also slashed NT$5.4 billion from planned expenditures.
The local government cried foul and said the mass budget cuts — the greatest among the five special municipalities — were not in the interest of the city’s development. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) city councilors left the sessions as a sign of protest.
According to Chen, Taipei only saw NT$1.4 billion in cuts, New Taipei City (新北市) had NT$4.1 billion, Greater Taichung had NT$350 million and Greater Tainan had NT$14 million.
The DPP’s council caucus slammed the KMT and said it was using its majority to get its own way over the city council.
It said that the KMT’s budget deductions were politically motivated and were aimed at denting Chen’s high popularity — she is set to run in the year-end mayoral elections — and showed no concern for the municipality’s residents.
The caucus called for the city council to get back on track and review the budget item-by-item.
Some pan-green supporters said in private that the KMT’s move was in essence a bid to fast track the year-end elections.
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) condemned the KMT’s actions as sacrificing the benefits of municipality residents and presenting a roadblock to municipal developments.
“The whole budget slash stinks of political maneuvering brought on by the year-end elections,” Su said.
Chen said that the budget cuts were beyond reasonable parameters and are worrisome.
“This is a difficult time for the city and many ongoing constructions — such as school dormitories and buildings, flood prevention construction, road construction — will be affected by the drastic cuts,” Chen wrote on Facebook, adding that many social welfare benefits may also be affected.
She also posted a completely black image on her Facebook profile, apparently as a wordless protest of the budget cuts.
Yet, the KMT council caucus said the city government was blurring the issue.
As the municipality currently has the highest amount of debt in the nation, Greater Kaohisung should not be taking out loans and selling public property for income, the KMT caucus said, adding that it would stand by its decision to reduce the burden on future generations.
The budget cuts also drew a heated discussion on Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the nation’s largest academic online bulletin board.
Some criticized the cuts, saying they would affect many sub-cultural creative and promotion events, such as the Anime Contents Expo, or cultural events such as the International Books Expo.
They said it would also affect software development for the Maritime Cultural & Popular Music Center.
Others said that such events have declined in quality and applauded the budget cuts.
Other opinions were that the elected representatives had been hijacked by political parties and did not care about the public, adding that no political party was better than another.
Additional reporting by Lee Hsin-fang and Ko You-how
source: Taipei Times
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