Leadership fund in 2025 budget was the last, says Lacson

Leadership fund in 2025 budget was the last, says Lacson Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson said Thursday that the 2025 national budget was the last spending plan to carry the so-called “leadership fund.” He said it was a creation of then-Public Works and Highways Secretary Manuel Bonoan and the late former Undersecretary Catalina Cabral. Lacson described the mechanism as improper – though not illegal – because it allowed lawmakers to identify projects during the budget preparation stage, which he said should be the function of the executive branch. He said legislators should instead participate in the local development councils and identify their districts’ needs and priorities, which would then feed into the local, provincial, and regional development planning process. Lacson argued that allowing lawmakers to influence the budget during the preparation stage disrupts the established budget process.‘Descendant ng pork barrel’ Lacson likened the leadership fund to a successor of the congressional pork barrel mechanism, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2013. "This is worse than the pork barrel because the pork barrel was under Congress. In this case, congressmen are already involved while the budget process is still in the domain of the executive because they have been offered 'allocable' funds," Lacson said in Filipino. He said Congress should exercise its role during the authorization or legislative phase of the budget process, when lawmakers may scrutinize and amend the proposed spending plan. According to Lacson, the budget process has four stages: preparation, authorization or legislation, implementation, and accountability or oversight. He said the introduction of allocables at the preparation stage blurred the separation of the roles of the executive and legislative roles in the budget process. Lacson recalls P500M allocableLacson also recalled an instance involving Cabral, whom he said sent a message to her staff after Senator Vicente Sotto III won the Senate presidency. "When Senator Sotto won, the late Usec. Cabral texted his staff. Tell Senator Sotto, he has 500 in allocables," Lacson said. Lacson said Sotto showed him the message because he was then chairperson of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and was active in budget deliberations. The senator did not specify in the interview whether the P500 million referred to a finalized appropriation, a proposed allocation, or a particular set of projects. Lacson has previously raised questions over allocables based on documents linked to the late Cabral. In December 2025, he said documents from Cabral’s camp and the DPWH showed that at least five Cabinet secretaries and several undersecretaries had allocables and/or non-allocables worth billions of pesos in the 2025 budget. "Having an allocable doesn't automatically mean there's misuse. But it could open the floodgates to abuse, to corruption," Lacson said. He said the issue became more concerning as the amounts associated with individual lawmakers grew into billions of pesos, compared with the much smaller amounts he recalled during his first term in the Senate. –NB, GMA News