Local Government Contribution to Titling

It’s been about five years since DENR issued a policy promoting partnership with local governments for titling. We are now faced with the eventual assessment question, “Have partnerships with local governments contributed to public land titling?”

From what we know about DENR-LGU partnerships, the answer is definitely yes. The difficulty is in putting a number behind that “yes”, as the follow-up question is usually, “So how many titles have local governments helped to issue?”

There are many ways by which local governments contribute to titling. Some of these ways provide an easy way to count specific titles produced with their help.  Some forms of local government contribution to titling are indirect and do not readily yield specific numbers.

The simplest case of local governments contributing to public land titling is when they conduct communication, information and education activities to tell their constituents about RA 10023 and the relatively faster, easier, and inexpensive way it provides for titling. These local governments also tend to serve as “branch offices” of the CENRO in that they receive and review applications, provide advise about supporting papers, then pass on complete applications to their DENR partners. 

In these instances, it’s easy to count the number of titles assisted by the local government - these are the applications sent on to DENR by LGU officials. Assuming that either or both of the LGU and DENR officials keep count. In Bohol, the LGUs submit directly to a special processing lane in the PENRO, which keeps records (note that in 2013 forward LGU contribution exceeded DENR's targets).

Year	DENR Target	LGU Contribution
2011	1,310	262
2012	1,979	870
2013	570	708
2014	701	844
2015	1,500	1,508

A second case is when local governments assign personnel to DENR offices to work on tasks related to public land titling. These tasks can be directly related to titling - as in the case of the Municipality of San Francisco (Agusan del Sur), where a local government employee has been assigned to work in the CENRO Office, specifically to assist applicants for public land titling.

We asked how much of the CENRO’s output can be considered as “LGU-assisted”? The answer was - “all of the outputs” because everything passed through that local government employee, working in the CENRO.  

At the end of the year, this employee submits a report to the Mayor listing the free patent applications endorsed by the CENRO to the PENRO. This provides an easy way to count the LGUs’ contribution.

Another case of LGU employee assignment to DENR was pioneered in Region X and lately replicated in Surigao del Sur: the Provincial Government pays the salaries of Encoders who work in the DENR Regional Office. Their job is to encode records of lands inside the Province.  These records are essential to titling because they help DPLIs identify lot occupants who could apply for titles, and thence to conduct follow-through field investigation. 

It’s not possible to directly link these Encoders’ outputs with issued titles so, in this case, it’s not easy to count the number of titles that are “LGU-assisted”.

Case Three is when local governments allocate funds for activities directly related to titling, such as subdivision surveys. The case in point here is again Surigao del Sur where the Provincial Government and the Municipal Governments split the cost of subdivision surveys needed for titling. 

It should be easy in this case to count the number of titles issued to lots that have been subdivided with funding support from local governments. But since neither the Municipal Assessors nor the CENROs seem to have been keeping track, the figures are not available. As of this writing, the Provincial Land Information Office is working on establishing systems to count the outputs of LGU-assisted subdivision surveys.

Another instance where the local government provides funding assistance for titling is in Bohol, where the Provincial Government has provided a grant of 3.5 million pesos to the PENRO. The money will be used for operational expenses of DPLIs to produce 5,000 more free patents above and beyond their DENR target. There should be no problem, in this case, in counting the free patents produced with local government assistance.

The final case (so far) is where Provincial-level partnerships are implementing Systematic Adjudication.  In Agusan del Sur, the Provincial Land Information Office is leading Systematic Adjudication efforts in component Municipalities. Following the model provided by LAMP, DENR and LGU partners have filled up an Initial Rapid Land Tenure Appraisal form, with DENR putting in the Lot Number, Cadastral Claimant and Lot Disposition data and the LGU putting in Tax Declarant information. At this point the local governments are conducting field validation to find occupants who can apply for titles. Theoretically, all free patents produced at the end of this process could be counted as “LGU-assisted”.

Other ideas have been floated about making it easier to count LGU contribution to titling. Among these are:

• Let the LGU DPLI alone (meaning, exclude the DENR DPLI) sign the formal report to the CENRO for applications that are adjudicated by the LGU. The number of free patents issued which have been submitted by LGU DPLIs is the LGU’s contribution;
• Let LGUs operate in certain barangays, which would be off-limits to DENR DPLIs. Any title issued to lots in the LGUs’ designated barangays are counted as “LGU contribution”.

So far we have not found concrete implementation of these ideas.

In a discussion on the difficulty of putting a number on LGU contribution to titling, one Local Chief Executive asked if it really matters. What matters, she said, is that local governments are helping their constituents secure tenure to their lands.