170 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) through the issuance of a joint circular22 that mandates the implementation of the Ad-Valorem Tax on Idle Lands. Assuming, however, that LGUs do impose the idle land tax, the revenues to be generated from such tax may be lower than that which the LGU would spend given the statutory ceiling as well as the procedures that LGUs need to follow to collect such taxes. There have been documented cases where LGUs either spent more to collect real property taxes or had to be creative so that they would escape the costly (financial and political) process of land valuation.23 To some extent, the higher cost of tax collection indicates the organizational constraint confronted by local government units. Organizational limits As noted by Manasan (2009), the inadequacy of tax administration in many LGUs, could be explained by the reality that many of the personnel assigned to the tax division are not technically equipped for their tasks, with very few accountants in their rolls to perform the necessary auditing. Another organizational flaw is the limited operationalization of development planning. Planning processes allow local governments to identify the priority needs, determine the resources and programs required to address these needs, and subsequently evaluate the extent of accomplishment of plan targets. In short, the systematic application of development planning enables the LGU to be more responsive. Under the LGC, development planning is also supposed to proceed in a participatory fashion, with development councils established from the barangay to the city/municipal levels. In their 11th Rapid Field Appraisal (RFA), The Asia Foundation (TAF) noted: Local governments' capacity to produce plans vary, reflecting their ability to link these various plans and make it a useful bases for prioritizing programs to achieve local government goals. Local governments with full staff complements can readily comply with the required planning mandates while others, especially those with planning staff of 3-4 people are hard put to do the plans updates without outside assistance. In addition, the multiple plans required from local governments affect the timely completion of these plans, compromise the quality, accuracy, reliability, and timeliness of the data used, with mechanisms for monitoring results against targets not always apparent as part of the planning process. Many of the local governments are still in the process of harmonizing all their other plans into the three main plans (CDP, LDIP and AIP) in compliance with the Joint Memorandum Circular No. 1 Series of 2007.