CHAIRMAN Martin Diño of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority has disputed an interpretation by a senior Presidential Management Staff official the appropriate appointing authority in the SBMA is the administrator, not the chairman.
Diño cited the 1987 Constitution and asserted, in a seven-page letter to Assistant Secretary Erwin Enad, that the Civil Service Commission resolution on which the PMS interpretation was based “has been reversed by the Court of Appeals.”
“Hence, [it] cannot be the basis of any opinion, or at the very least, should not have been cited,” Diño wrote.
It was Dino’s reply to Enad’s Jan. 30 letter in which the PMS official claimed the “appointing authority of the SBMA employees is its Administrator and Chief Executive Officer,” citing CSC Resolution No. 110154 dated March 29, 2011.
The said resolution, according to Enad, based its decision of Executive 340 s. 2004.
Diño earlier asked the PMS for clarification who between the two senior SBMA officials, chairman or administrator, had the power to appoint lower-ranked officers in the agency.
Diño reminded Enad that “in all commissions, including the Constitutional Commission, and boards, the Chairman is the appointing authority.”
As such, the SBMA Chairman “is thus vested with the sole power to appoint lower-ranked officers” of the agency.
The 1987 Constitution, in Section 16, Article VII, provides that Congress “may, by law, vest the appointment of other officers lower in rank” in the head of the board, Dino said.
While the law may not authorize an undersecretary to appoint lower-ranked officers in the Executive department, Dino said “in an agency the power is vested in the head of agency.”
“In a board, the head is also the chairperson of the board,” Dindo wrote, citing the same provision. “…(T)he law may not also authorize officers other than the head of the agency, commission or board to appoint lower-ranked officers.”
Dino also quoted the pertinent provision the Constitution “authorizes Congress to vest the power to appoint lower-ranked officers specifically in the heads of the specified offices, and in no other person.’
Agencies, like departments, have no collegial governing bodies but have heads of agencies.
”Thus ‘heads’ applies to agencies,” Dino said. “Any other interpretation is untenable.”