The Senate on Friday approved on third and final reading a bill expanding the powers and capabilities of the Office of the Solicitor General but without abolishing the Presidential Commission on Good Government and Office of the Government Corporate Counsel.
Last December, Senator Richard Gordon filed Senate Bill 1626, seeking to consolidate the legal services in the government into one office for efficiency and economy by abolishing PCGG and OGCC and transferring their powers and functions to the Solicitor General.
Gordon said the reforms are needed if the government is to address and rectify the pace of disposition of cases handled by the OSG.
At present, he said the ratio of pending cases per OSG lawyer “is at 1,415 total active cases per lawyer.”
With the bill’s approval, the Senate and House of Representatives have to convene the bicameral conference committee to reconcile the disagreeing provisions.
The House version of the bill, passed in May, still includes the abolition of PCGG and OGCC.
Gordon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, later expressed reservations about integrating the two agencies with the OSG, since questions on conflict of interest were raised.
Instead of abolishing the PCGG, the senator said it should be given sufficient budget and that a committee should be created to monitor its activities.
After a year of deliberations, the Senate voted 16-0 to drop the proposal to abolish the two offices and passed a bill strengthening the OSG by including reforms allowing it to hire more lawyers and boost efforts to make it the government’s principal law office and legal defender.
Gordon said the approved Senate Bill No. 1823 will primarily amend Executive Order No. 292 or the Administrative Code and Republic Act No. 9417.
It would introduce provisions that directly address the most important challenges faced by the OSG such as the hiring of new lawyers, skills training and specialization, and modernization of equipment, among others.
“The Office of the Solicitor General is in dire need of competent, dedicated and honest lawyers to perform its mandate of being the People’s Tribune and the legal defender of the Republic of the Philippines. We need to aid the OSG to take on this formidable task,” he said.
The bill expands the powers of the OSG to “conciliate, mediate, administratively settle, or adjudicate all disputes, claims, and controversies involving mixed questions of fact and law, or questions of fact only, solely between or among the departments, bureaus, offices, agencies, and instrumentalities of the national government, including constitutional offices or agencies.”
The bill also mandates competitive retirement perks and other benefits for OSG members to help recruit new lawyers and make them stay in the agency, and to address the problem of too few OSG lawyers who are overloaded with cases.
Among the new perks to attract lawyers to the OSG were retirement benefits equivalent to those received by the National Prosecution Service, lump sum gratuities, and death benefits for the Solicitor General, Assistant Solicitors General, and State Solicitors, “provided that they will not represent interests adverse to those of the public.”
The bill also calls for the institutionalization of intensive training of OSG personnel, including the provision of a legal internship program for law students, to develop capacity and “ensure those who are trained cascade what they learn and stay in the OSG.”
“More and better-trained OSG lawyers means lower caseload for each lawyer. A lighter caseload would mean lesser postponements of hearings, pleadings would be filed on time. Ultimately, this would help in the faster disposition of cases,” Gordon said.
The measure will also allow the OSG to hire foreign counsel based on who, in the OSG’s opinion, could best represent the interests of the Republic.
The bill will increase the share of the OSG in proceeds from litigations so it could fund training of employees, modernize office and equipment, that may lead to better performance of OSG lawyers and helping improve court dockets.