Local Legislators' Toolkit - The Sangguniang Panlalawigan ng ...

A. FORMULATING THE LEGISLATIVE AGENDAA key indicator of effective local legislation is the capacity of local legislators to analyze theproblems and concerns of the community, aggregate these, and focus efforts to addressthem in the context of available resources of the community towards local development.This is essentially what formulating a legislative agenda is about.A legislative agenda (LA)• is a package of priority legislative measures designed to support local developmentpriorities, particularly those defined in the executive-legislative agenda (ELA).• serves as the road map to guide the sanggunian in identifying, analyzing andformulating solutions to problems and issues requiring public policy action.• is a list of prioritized ordinances and resolutions for enactment during a specifiedperiod, usually three years, contributing to the attainment of the LGU vision andmission.<strong>The</strong> LA is a tool for fulfilling the sanggunian members’ mandate as elected representativesof the people and is useful for:• organizing and prioritizing the work of the sanggunian• ensuring convergence of the LA and ELA• setting clear performance targets of the sanggunian• educating the people on the work of the sanggunian• assessing the performance of the sanggunian.<strong>The</strong> LA may be prepared as soon as the newly-elected officials assume office. Asmentioned in Part One, the LA process may be undertaken as a joint executive-legislativeactivity through the ELA team or as a separate, parallel activity to the ELA process. In eithercase, the ELA and LA process converges at Step 7 described below where legislativemeasures or requirements are identified to ensure support for the implementation of LGUpriorities.87