The Constitutional Court yesterday accepted the Control Yuan’s petition for a constitutional judgement on this year’s central government budget, the Judicial Yuan said.
The Control Yuan said its total budget was NT$1.09 billion (US$36.42 million), of which more than NT$800 million would be for personnel expenses, but its budget for operational 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 and suspend several of its functions.
Photo: Lin Che-yuan, Taipei Times
The budget was promulgated on March 21, after lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party rejected two proposals from the Executive Yuan urging the legislature to reconsider.
The cuts to the Control Yuan’s operational expenses go beyond what is reasonable and severely endanger its ability to carry out its duties, the branch said.
The budget cuts functionally abolish the Control Yuan and undermine the principle of a separation of powers, the branch added.
Department of Supervisory Investigation Director Yang Chang-hsien (楊昌憲) filed a petition for a constitutional judgement on March 24, asking the court to review the Legislative Yuan’s actions and invalidate the cuts retroactively to Jan. 1.
The court accepted the petition in accordance with Article 32 of the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), the Judicial Yuan said.
In other news, the Executive Yuan’s decision to reduce subsidies for local governments by 25 percent continued to be debated.
Local government support for the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$63.6 billion supplementary budget could be a solution, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday.
Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Cho as saying that the Legislative Yuan’s budget cuts, which totaled NT$207.6 billion, directly impact people and forced the Executive Yuan to adjust its expenditures.
KMT New Taipei City Council caucus secretary-general Wang Wei-yuan (王威元) and deputy secretary Huang Hsin-hua (黃心華) held a news conference yesterday 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 must not be less than the budget it had the year before.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said he would submit a request asking the central government to reconsider, as the subsidies have already been approved for use in social welfare initiatives.
Additional reporting by Huang Tzu-yang
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