Ciudadanos is one of what can seem like a baffling array of political parties that are positioned to the left of centre. It is a comparatively new entity, having been formed in 2006 initially as a party in Catalonia but which is now country-wide. It has performed reasonably well in its Catalonian heartland (nine parliamentary seats at the 2012 election) but less well nationally; it has no deputy in Congress. Nevertheless, a recent poll suggested that the party could take 12% of the national vote, which is an extraordinarily high poll rating when one considers the support for Podemos.
Ciudadanos is a reminder that reforming parties had been created some years before Podemos came on the scene. Changes to the political system, anti-corruption, Ciudadanos has had something of the Podemos philosophy without drawing as much attention to itself. It was a creation of a time that well pre-dated Podemos when great misgivings with the current political system were already been voiced. Almost simultaneous with its founding was that of the centrist Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD), which has also placed emphasis on political reform and with which pacts have been suggested but ruled out.
One area of reform that Ciudadanos (C's) and the UPyD have in common is that of local government. The UPyD has previously advocated reducing the number of town halls in Spain. The president of C's, Albert Rivera, agrees. He proposed the other day that town halls be cut by a massive 7,000, to leave only 1,000 and did so within the context of a programme of "democratic regeneration". In this, the emphasis differs to that of the UPyD, which has pointed to the massive cost savings that could be made.
But is Rivera's proposal contradictory? A strong argument in favour of small units of local government is that they benefit democracy. Localism increases citizen involvement, it hastens and improves decision-making, it acts as a buttress against corruption of more centralised forms of government. These small units can be and are tiny. In Mallorca the tiniest is Escorca with fewer than 300 people, greatly outnumbered by the local goat population.
This theory of localism is not, however, well observed in practice. Town halls may be better at understanding local issues and so making informed decisions, but as for citizen involvement and corruption, the evidence in favour doesn't stack up. There is repeated criticism of the lack of transparency and information at town halls, which therefore limits involvement, while corruption cases or allegations of corruption are never too far from the surface. Just consider that at present there are investigations related to Andratx, Calvia (the radio affair), Felanitx, Lloseta, Marratxi, Pollensa, Vilafranca. Go back over time and you will find any number of cases of corruption, allegations and electoral fraud. It might be noted that the leader of the El Pi party, Jaume Font, was once disqualified for eight months from public office because of such a fraud in Sa Pobla, which he denied. (And he subsequently romped home as mayor.)
For all the faults with local, town hall government, Rivera's proposal sounds like one that would replace one imperfect system with another. If localism, warts and all, is truly a more democratic form of government, then how would drastically undermining it result in democratic regeneration? The UPyD line, that of greater efficiencies in terms of cost and administration, has, on the face of it, more merit, but however the case for reducing the number of town halls is styled, a reduction would bring with it perils.
The UPyD suggested three years ago that towns with fewer than 20,000 people in Mallorca should be merged. In other words the town halls would be merged. Under this suggestion, there would be only five municipalities that would be unaffected. For modernisers and, dare I say it, those with a British perspective on such matters, the suggestion would make sense; it is undeniable that services in smaller towns are comparatively and proportionally more expensive than in larger towns. But it is a suggestion that flies in the face of the sociology and culture of the villages and towns. The town hall is symbolic of local identity. It may not be the final word in efficiency. It may not be without its dodginess, but when there are villages like Buger (fractionally more than 1,000 people) which can celebrate anniversaries of "independence", the importance of village identity and of its prime institution makes tampering with that institution extremely risky.
The risk may explain why national government has shied away from radical reform. Significant reductions in the number of councillors (which will be the case with this year's elections) are as far as it has gone. It might be said that it has missed the opportunity, presented by economic crisis, to effect real reform, but was there ever the stomach for it?
Showing posts with label Local government reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Local government reform. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Sunday, June 09, 2013
Small Town Mayor
Has the Spanish Government missed a trick? Economic crisis, we thought, was going to provide the impetus for reforming the bloated state of public administration and local government. Madrid had suggested that it would but it has now performed a volte-face in respect of certain aspects of local government reform.
It is unfair to expect someone to take on the onerous task of being a town's mayor without him or her receiving some remuneration. Even in very small towns, those with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, there is administration to oversee and there are decisions to be made and meetings to be attended. Madrid had been proposing that mayors of such small towns would no longer be paid. It has backtracked, and so towns like Deià and Fornalutx will still compensate the lucky future winners of the mayoral selection process.
It would have been unfair for mayors to have to do their jobs for nothing and it would also have been a risk, if only a potential risk of harmful perception. Mayors, even paid mayors, have been known to take the shilling that they shouldn't. If a mayor is not paid, fertile would be the terrain of dark rumours regarding permissions for this or that. Mayors must be getting something for their trouble would be the perception and the potential accusation, even when there is not the slightest shred of evidence.
It was a bad move on behalf of the government to have even proposed not paying some mayors. But it was a bad move that missed the point and so therefore missed the trick, and this is emphasised by a further U-turn by the government. For towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants - and towns of this size almost form a majority in Mallorca - the government was planning on intervening where municipalities were not functioning in a financially efficient manner. By intervention, it meant that it would have scrapped the offending town halls. Now, all it is saying is that town halls can merge their operations if they wish to, which probably means that none will; a mayor of an underperforming town will not come over all turkey-like and vote for his or her job to be done away with and handed to the mayor in the neighbouring village.
I have no desire to see small towns lose their ability to govern themselves, and this is because I favour localism, regardless of the population size of a particular municipality. But this, and I'll admit it, is an idealistic preference. There is a world of difference between local democracy idealism and local democracy pragmatism, and it is primarily one to do with cost; localism reduced to the very local is that much more expensive to operate.
The government doesn't appear to be backtracking over other elements of its reform, namely the reduction in the number of paid councillors and limits placed on councillor/mayoral remuneration as well as the shifting of responsibilities from towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants to provincial authorities (which, in the case of the Balearics, mean the islands' councils). Significant savings will be derived from these measures.
However, vastly more significant savings would be made were the government to be truly bold and undertake a drastic reform of local government. The UPyD party placed an enormous figure on what would be saved were towns in Mallorca with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants to be merged. 18,000 million euros. I have no idea how the party arrives at such a sum, but if it is to believed, it is a figure which, at a stroke, would resolve problems with Mallorcan public finances.
And if it is to believed, then why doesn't the government do it? Perhaps it is more idealistic than it is normally given credit for; it isn't the centralising monster that it has been made out to be. Or perhaps there are other reasons, and the UPyD might well be one of them.
The Partido Popular (and PSOE) both face an enormous crisis of public confidence. While I have doubted the ability of the UPyD and other smaller parties to genuinely challenge Spain's two-party system, there are commentators who now believe that it could happen and that the challenges would come from the centrist UPyD and the leftist IU. The UPyD is populated by an eminently sensible bunch of people, driven by practicalities rather than dogma. It might not do itself many favours by going around suggesting that it would merge most town halls in Mallorca, but it, unlike the PP, wouldn't have a lot to lose by doing so. The PP, on the other hand, would, and especially because it would face mutiny from all those towns that it runs.
All talk of truly drastic local government reform is foundering on the rocks of the "realpolitik" of local government, namely the PP's strength at town hall level. This strength, though, is its weakness. Local government reform requires boldness. And bold is something that the government isn't.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It is unfair to expect someone to take on the onerous task of being a town's mayor without him or her receiving some remuneration. Even in very small towns, those with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, there is administration to oversee and there are decisions to be made and meetings to be attended. Madrid had been proposing that mayors of such small towns would no longer be paid. It has backtracked, and so towns like Deià and Fornalutx will still compensate the lucky future winners of the mayoral selection process.
It would have been unfair for mayors to have to do their jobs for nothing and it would also have been a risk, if only a potential risk of harmful perception. Mayors, even paid mayors, have been known to take the shilling that they shouldn't. If a mayor is not paid, fertile would be the terrain of dark rumours regarding permissions for this or that. Mayors must be getting something for their trouble would be the perception and the potential accusation, even when there is not the slightest shred of evidence.
It was a bad move on behalf of the government to have even proposed not paying some mayors. But it was a bad move that missed the point and so therefore missed the trick, and this is emphasised by a further U-turn by the government. For towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants - and towns of this size almost form a majority in Mallorca - the government was planning on intervening where municipalities were not functioning in a financially efficient manner. By intervention, it meant that it would have scrapped the offending town halls. Now, all it is saying is that town halls can merge their operations if they wish to, which probably means that none will; a mayor of an underperforming town will not come over all turkey-like and vote for his or her job to be done away with and handed to the mayor in the neighbouring village.
I have no desire to see small towns lose their ability to govern themselves, and this is because I favour localism, regardless of the population size of a particular municipality. But this, and I'll admit it, is an idealistic preference. There is a world of difference between local democracy idealism and local democracy pragmatism, and it is primarily one to do with cost; localism reduced to the very local is that much more expensive to operate.
The government doesn't appear to be backtracking over other elements of its reform, namely the reduction in the number of paid councillors and limits placed on councillor/mayoral remuneration as well as the shifting of responsibilities from towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants to provincial authorities (which, in the case of the Balearics, mean the islands' councils). Significant savings will be derived from these measures.
However, vastly more significant savings would be made were the government to be truly bold and undertake a drastic reform of local government. The UPyD party placed an enormous figure on what would be saved were towns in Mallorca with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants to be merged. 18,000 million euros. I have no idea how the party arrives at such a sum, but if it is to believed, it is a figure which, at a stroke, would resolve problems with Mallorcan public finances.
And if it is to believed, then why doesn't the government do it? Perhaps it is more idealistic than it is normally given credit for; it isn't the centralising monster that it has been made out to be. Or perhaps there are other reasons, and the UPyD might well be one of them.
The Partido Popular (and PSOE) both face an enormous crisis of public confidence. While I have doubted the ability of the UPyD and other smaller parties to genuinely challenge Spain's two-party system, there are commentators who now believe that it could happen and that the challenges would come from the centrist UPyD and the leftist IU. The UPyD is populated by an eminently sensible bunch of people, driven by practicalities rather than dogma. It might not do itself many favours by going around suggesting that it would merge most town halls in Mallorca, but it, unlike the PP, wouldn't have a lot to lose by doing so. The PP, on the other hand, would, and especially because it would face mutiny from all those towns that it runs.
All talk of truly drastic local government reform is foundering on the rocks of the "realpolitik" of local government, namely the PP's strength at town hall level. This strength, though, is its weakness. Local government reform requires boldness. And bold is something that the government isn't.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Improper: Rationalising town halls
National government finally seems to have woken up to a fact that has been staring it in the face for an age. In fact, it hasn't just woken up to the fact. It's known about it for an age as well. Just that it hasn't chosen to do anything about it. The fact is duplication. At local government levels. And especially in Mallorca where there is the intervening level of government between the town halls and the regional government, i.e. the Council of Mallorca.
Madrid has woken up to the fact and has decided to take some action, but what action is it to take and is it the right one? It has decided that towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants - and there are only a handful of towns in Mallorca other than the capital Palma that have more - are going to lose some of their responsibilities and that these will be transferred to the island council.
Given the number of small municipalities in Mallorca (and everywhere else in Spain), delivery of public services is highly cost inefficient. It is more expensive, in terms of relative cost per head of population, to provide services in smaller municipalities than it is in larger ones, and when one talks of larger municipalities in Mallorca, there are, apart from Palma, only five (Calvià, Inca, Manacor, Llucmajor and Marratxí) with populations greater than 20,000.
The reference to 20,000 inhabitants is significant for two reasons. Under the Spanish law that determines the operations of local government (Ley de Bases de Régimen Local) this is a point at which local authorities assume greater responsibilities and are also entitled to elect more councillors (a further point is 50,000 inhabitants). Madrid not only intends to take away responsibilities from smaller municipalities, it also intends to reduce the number of councillors - by almost a third.
There are, under this law, services that all municipalities are obliged to provide. They include, for example, street lighting and cleaning, refuse collection and drinking water. Even these basic services are being eyed up for rationalisation by the government and for transfer to a greater authority, namely the Council of Mallorca.
The law regulating local government operations is to undergo a major reform. It needs to be reformed because it does in itself give rise to duplication of effort and to the provision of services by some town halls that isn't really within their competence to provide. There is a distinction between those services which a town hall currently must provide, such as refuse collection, and a town hall's competences. These do, for instance, include participation in education but not in the actual delivery of education, except in so-called complementary activities related to education. Yet, it has not been unknown for town halls to, for example, assume delivery of nursery education services.
Some of these competences are referred to as "impropias", by which it is meant that town halls exceed their competence and spend money on them in an improper way. It is estimated that a quarter of town halls spend in general goes on such improper competences. When one considers the saving that could be derived from elimination of this improper spend in addition to that which would come from rationalisation of basic services under a single authority, then you can understand why the government is so keen to effect this local government reform.
Critics of this move argue that the government is turning the clock back to the centralised system of government that existed in Franco's times, but this is an extreme assessment. Decentralisation would remain, just that it would be more coherent and unified within the island's council, and the Council of Mallorca, the point of which I have questioned repeatedly, would end up with some real point to it. It would become what you would expect a council to be: the body that arranges, maintains and manages services.
What would happen to the town halls though? Stripped of much of their purpose, might it signal the end for them? There have been calls for Mallorca's town halls to be done away with - the head of the hoteliers' federation suggested this not so long ago - but they would still clearly have a role, even with fewer councillors.
Mention of the hoteliers' federation is relevant. The Balearic Government, and not the national government, has buckled to pressure from the town halls to ensure that they still have the final say over planning when the new tourism law is enacted, something that may bring them into conflict with the hoteliers. But might the national government go over the head of the regional government and take this competence away as well? One fancies that there is going to be considerable unease and disgruntlement at many a town hall in Mallorca in any event, but if responsibility for planning was to be challenged, then the town halls would be up in arms.
The reform makes much sense, but it is worth asking how it is that the town halls came to be exceeding their authority in ways that they appear to have been. One can only assume that there has been insufficient control which has allowed the town halls to grow like topsy, a point made when in early 2010, a report showed that personnel costs alone at Mallorca's town halls had doubled since the turn of the century.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Madrid has woken up to the fact and has decided to take some action, but what action is it to take and is it the right one? It has decided that towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants - and there are only a handful of towns in Mallorca other than the capital Palma that have more - are going to lose some of their responsibilities and that these will be transferred to the island council.
Given the number of small municipalities in Mallorca (and everywhere else in Spain), delivery of public services is highly cost inefficient. It is more expensive, in terms of relative cost per head of population, to provide services in smaller municipalities than it is in larger ones, and when one talks of larger municipalities in Mallorca, there are, apart from Palma, only five (Calvià, Inca, Manacor, Llucmajor and Marratxí) with populations greater than 20,000.
The reference to 20,000 inhabitants is significant for two reasons. Under the Spanish law that determines the operations of local government (Ley de Bases de Régimen Local) this is a point at which local authorities assume greater responsibilities and are also entitled to elect more councillors (a further point is 50,000 inhabitants). Madrid not only intends to take away responsibilities from smaller municipalities, it also intends to reduce the number of councillors - by almost a third.
There are, under this law, services that all municipalities are obliged to provide. They include, for example, street lighting and cleaning, refuse collection and drinking water. Even these basic services are being eyed up for rationalisation by the government and for transfer to a greater authority, namely the Council of Mallorca.
The law regulating local government operations is to undergo a major reform. It needs to be reformed because it does in itself give rise to duplication of effort and to the provision of services by some town halls that isn't really within their competence to provide. There is a distinction between those services which a town hall currently must provide, such as refuse collection, and a town hall's competences. These do, for instance, include participation in education but not in the actual delivery of education, except in so-called complementary activities related to education. Yet, it has not been unknown for town halls to, for example, assume delivery of nursery education services.
Some of these competences are referred to as "impropias", by which it is meant that town halls exceed their competence and spend money on them in an improper way. It is estimated that a quarter of town halls spend in general goes on such improper competences. When one considers the saving that could be derived from elimination of this improper spend in addition to that which would come from rationalisation of basic services under a single authority, then you can understand why the government is so keen to effect this local government reform.
Critics of this move argue that the government is turning the clock back to the centralised system of government that existed in Franco's times, but this is an extreme assessment. Decentralisation would remain, just that it would be more coherent and unified within the island's council, and the Council of Mallorca, the point of which I have questioned repeatedly, would end up with some real point to it. It would become what you would expect a council to be: the body that arranges, maintains and manages services.
What would happen to the town halls though? Stripped of much of their purpose, might it signal the end for them? There have been calls for Mallorca's town halls to be done away with - the head of the hoteliers' federation suggested this not so long ago - but they would still clearly have a role, even with fewer councillors.
Mention of the hoteliers' federation is relevant. The Balearic Government, and not the national government, has buckled to pressure from the town halls to ensure that they still have the final say over planning when the new tourism law is enacted, something that may bring them into conflict with the hoteliers. But might the national government go over the head of the regional government and take this competence away as well? One fancies that there is going to be considerable unease and disgruntlement at many a town hall in Mallorca in any event, but if responsibility for planning was to be challenged, then the town halls would be up in arms.
The reform makes much sense, but it is worth asking how it is that the town halls came to be exceeding their authority in ways that they appear to have been. One can only assume that there has been insufficient control which has allowed the town halls to grow like topsy, a point made when in early 2010, a report showed that personnel costs alone at Mallorca's town halls had doubled since the turn of the century.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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