• Proposes raising the replacement rate to 100% of the workforce for municipalities that have complied with fiscal rules and have remnants for effective provision of public services
The Popular Parliamentary Group in the Congress of Deputies has urged the Government with a Proposition not of Law to allow the use of 100% of the surplus to the municipalities for the fight against the Coronavirus.
Specifically, the Popular Group calls on the Executive to allow “flexibility of the Expenditure Rule and other rules contained in the Organic Law of Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability so that all City Councils can have 100% of the surplus generated in 2019 to implement those services, aids and extraordinary measures that allow to act against the negative health, social and economic effects derived from the COVID-19 pandemic as long as they do not involve structural expenses ”.
With this initiative, signed by the spokesperson for the Popular Parliamentary Group, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, the PP deputy secretaries Antonio González Terol and Elvira Rodríguez, and the GPP deputy spokesperson, Mario Garcés, the GPP states that “the surplus may be used for spending current or investment and these will not count in the spending rule or in the budgetary stability, the approval of the Economic-Financial Plan not being necessary for the cases of non-compliance due to the use of the Remainder of the Treasury for General Expenses ”.
Likewise, it proposes “authorizing the City Councils to make non-structural expenses in areas for which they are not strictly competent (employment, education…) for the implementation of policies, initiatives and / or own or complementary aid from other autonomous and / or state governments to get a quick, coordinated and effective attention to the neighbors affected by the coronavirus crisis and to achieve that economic and employment recovery take place as soon as possible ”.
In addition, it urges the Executive to "extend the deadlines so that the Financially Sustainable Investments, financed from the 2019 surplus, can be executed in 2021 given that the suspension of administrative deadlines as a result of the state of alarm will mean that many of them cannot be completed in 2020 ”.
It also requests the Government to implement measures so that the City Councils can apply their surplus to the purpose established in RDL 8/2020, such as “the removal of the limit of the forecast of budgetary stability in the 2020 settlement; the replacement of the audit function by permanent financial control for the management of aid to vulnerable people; and that the economic benefits of the Social Services System of the CCAA and Local Entities to individuals and families in a situation or risk of emergency and / or social exclusion are not considered subsidies ”.
Finally, it requires the Government "to respect and guarantee the autonomy that the Constitution and the laws grant to local entities for the management of their resources, of public money that belongs to each and every Spaniard, not to a specific government."
Likewise, with another Proposition not of Law, the GPP urges the Government “to allow local entities to develop within the 2020 budget scenario, which includes the application of the remaining treasury of the year 2019, powers that are not its own to complement the measures and aid put in place by other administrations to face the pandemic ”.
Likewise, it calls on the Executive to raise "the replacement rate to 100% of the existing workforce for City Councils that have complied with the fiscal rules and
they have remnants to enable effective provision of public services (many of which are essential in the face of the COVID-19 crisis) given the existence of numerous vacancies in the workforce and their aging ”.
The GPP also requires that it be allowed to “lift the suspension of the deadlines for the processing of the procedures of the entities of the Public Sector decreed in the
Third Additional Provision of Royal Decree 463/2020, of March 14, declaring a state of alarm regarding public procurement so as not to interrupt the contracting processes of local entities and thus speed up economic recovery and employment after completion of confinement. "
This proposal is justified because "it would allow local administrations to continue with their usual contracting processes without generating delays in services or collapses when the period of confinement ends."
In addition, the Government is asked to "consider the pandemic as a situation of serious danger, so that the Local Entities can acquire goods and contract the services and supplies necessary to face its effects, through the emergency processing provided for in the art.120 of Law 9/2017, of November 8, on Public Sector Contracts ”.
Finally, the Executive is urged to “pay the 700 million that the State owes to all the local VAT entities corresponding to December 2017; to implement extraordinary liquidity measures, especially so that those local entities that have not had a surplus in their public accounts can initiate measures and aid in the face of the pandemic; to designate local entities as beneficiaries of those Funds that give priority to social policies and social and economic reconstruction that are enabled by the State and are directed to the Autonomous Communities; and that the new programming of European Funds and Initiatives 2021-2027 be reoriented and adapted to the reconstruction of local economies with the creation of specific funds whose recipients are local entities ”.
