A majority of the justices on the Constitutional Court have voted to accept the Control Yuan’s petition for a constitutional judgement on this year’s central government budget, the Judicial Yuan said today.
The Control Yuan said its total allocated budget was NT$1.09 billion (US$36.56 million), of which more than NT$800 million was for personnel expenses, but its budget for operation expenses was reduced from NT$240 million to NT$10 million, a 96-percent cut.
The Control Yuan filed the petition after it was forced to adjust or suspend several of its functions.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The budget was promulgated by the president on March 21, after opposition lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rejected two reconsideration proposals from the Executive Yuan.
The 96-percent cut to the Control Yuan’s operational expenses go beyond what is reasonable and “severely endanger” its ability to carry out its duties, the Control Yuan said.
The budget cuts functionally abolish the Control Yuan and undermine the principle of separation of powers, it said.
Yang Chang-hsien (楊昌憲), director of the Control Yuan's Department of Supervisory Investigation, filed a petition for a constitutional interpretation on March 24, asking the court to review the Legislative Yuan’s actions and invalidate the cuts retroactively to Jan. 1 of this year.
Per Article 32 of the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), the court accepted the petition, the Judicial Yuan said today.
In other news, the Executive Yuan’s decision to reduce subsidies for local governments by 25 percent, NT$63.6 billion, continues to be debated.
Local government support for the Executive Yuan’s NT$63.6-billion supplementary budget could be a solution, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said today.
Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Cho as saying that the Legislative Yuan’s NT$207.6-billion budget cut directly impacts people and forced the Executive Yuan to adjust its expenditures.
KMT New Taipei City caucus secretary-general Wang Wei-yuan (王威元) and deputy secretary Huang Hsin-hua (黃心華) held a news conference today to protest the Executive Yuan’s decision, calling on the government to not use vulnerable groups as political bargaining chips.
They cited Article 30 of the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), which says that the amount provided to local governments shall not be less than the budgeted amount from the year before.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) today said he would formally submit a request for the government to reconsider the decision as the subsidies have already been approved for use for social welfare initiatives.
Additional reporting by Huang Tzu-yang
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