TO MAKE the IRA more equitable, Brillantes is proposing that the formula currently used as basis for its distribution be amended to include a fourth criterion: poverty index. Right now, population, land area, and equal sharing are being considered as the IRA's yardsticks.

The problem with that formula, argues Brillantes, is that it doesn't do anything. "It doesn't lessen poverty because rich LGUs like Makati get equal share, equal access to the IRA as poor LGUs like Dinglas in Ilocos Norte," he says. "The IRA should have a bias for the poorer local governments."

Naga City Mayor Robredo, for his part, is asking for a more responsive and relevant IRA sharing scheme based on demographics, in view of the continuing effort to convert more towns into cities. Because Philippine cities today are supporting between 34 and 43 percent of the population, he says a 23-percent share is no longer tenable. Specifically, he eyes the share of provinces as the most logical source, since these have benefited the most under the current scheme.

Yet because it comes like the proverbial manna from heaven, the IRA has also made many local governnments dependent on the national government — a development quite contrary to the very spirit of local autonomy envisioned in the Code. Asks Pimentel, whose office estimates the number of IRA-dependent local governments at over 80 percent: "What happens now to the objective of devolution, which is to create more autonomous units of government, more self-reliant, more innovative in their approach to development?"

As he sees it, this dependence is the result of the failure of local governments to use their taxing power as provided for in the Code so they could raise funds on their own. The obvious reason for this, the senator says, is that local officials don't want to be blamed by their constituents for tax increases.

But imposing local taxes has not been the only underused — though in some cases abused — power in the hands of local governments. Another has to do with actively seeking alternative activities that will add to their resources. Still another is on the matter of the environmental impact of projects in their localities wherein the local government units have not been as assertive.

All this Brillantes attributes to mindsets that have been steeped in decades and decades of centralized governance. He says government structures and procedures — auditing rules, purchasing rules — are still oriented toward centralization, mired in bureaucratic inertia that is not supportive of local autonomy.

A case in point, as brought up by Robredo, is the Code's provision regarding the local school board. He says the school board has been "woefully" underused because it continues to follow the framework of a centralized public school system. "That, for the last three decades, has simply failed to work," he says. "To my mind, the local school board provision reinforces this institutional ineffectiveness and worse, shackles progressive communities like Naga, Bulacan, Cebu, and Marikina."

At the very least, however, the Code has led to a shift of perspectives and paradigms among the country's 79 provinces, 118 cities, 1,501 municipalities, and 42,000 barangays. And though the commonplace observation is that devolution democratized not only polity but also corruption, it actually devolved accountabilities as well. As Brillantes puts it: "Nasa inyo ang kapangyarihan, ngunit nasa inyo rin ang pananagutan (The power is in your hands, but so is the responsibility). It might sound like a slogan. But it's true, and I've seen it firsthand."

Brillantes also notes that 15 years is too short to turn things around. "But" he says, "the mere fact that we have been able to accomplish what we did is already miraculous."

Robredo, however, would rather use the Parable of the Talents than talk of miracles when it comes to gauging how far local governments have gone.

"In that parable," he says, "the wicked slave — who buried the gold entrusted to him — was punished by our Lord by casting him into the darkness. This resonates clearly with the need to exact accountability among local officials, and the Code can explicitly mandate a performance evaluation system among elected officials — particularly chief executives — that will rate them comprehensively, and whose results should be publicized nationwide to allow for comparison. This will empower voters with a solid basis for their decisions come election day: whether to reward their leaders with another term, or cast them off into political oblivion."