As if the open war for regional financing within the framework of the constitution of a new Government seemed small, a new actor with a lot of power has decided to join it to see if it fishes in a troubled river. If the 17 autonomous communities were already participating in the open public debate for the possible investiture of Pedro Sánchez —of very different colors and interests— and an amalgam of political formations (independence, nationalist, regionalist and confluences) with positions that are difficult to reconcile with each other Now it is the local entities that are looking for their space.
The more than 8,000 Spanish city councils, endorsed by the good management of their resources —they are, as a whole, the administrative level with the lowest accumulated debt—, are trying to surface an old debate that never achieves the necessary space on the public agenda: the improvement of the local financing system. The localities integrated in the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) have been demanding for years that the so-called second decentralization of powers be carried out, an administrative act that has never been completed and that would allow them to be given more autonomy to expense of exercising the functions that communities or the central administration perform today.
Vote between towns to request a tax reform
The FEMP, chaired by the mayor of Vigo, Abel Caballero, will vote in September for a new governing body once the different town halls of the country have been constituted after the elections on May 28. To that vote it will also take, for review and debate, up to 258 proposals that will make up the road map of municipalism for the next four years. And the first of them have to do with the idea of reforming the fiscal framework of local entities.
The last reform of local financing took place in the year 2022 To carry it out, propose to start by precisely delimiting the functions and powers of local entities. “Only in this way can the reform be addressed,” they include.
This beginning would require the reform of the Law of Bases of Local Regime and the Law of Rationalization and Sustainability of the Local Administration, so that it could gain competences in areas very close to the neighbor, such as social services, economy, employment, development. local roll, urban agenda, youth, equality, consumption or education.
Claim “a coherent model”
The group of municipalities believes that it is necessary to “improve the local financing system and the local tax system” to guarantee “effective compliance with the principle of financial sufficiency” and achieve “a coherent model” in the public sector as a whole. This would be achieved, in his opinion, with measures such as the modification of the tax regime that applies to gas, electricity or telecommunications companies, “so that the city councils receive the income that compensates them in proportion to the utility or benefits provided to the use of the local public domain”.
The FEMP Local Government Commission, in charge of putting these proposals to a vote, advocates that the new fiscal model for localities be reviewed every five years and that it be inspired “by the general principles of institutional loyalty, transparency, autonomy, co labor and inter-administrative cooperation and normative adaptation to the social, legal, economic and institutional reality”, as indicated in the resolution.
Contributions against depopulation and being able to borrow
His proposals also to replace the cadastral value by a reference value in local taxes, that the State compensate the losses of obtaining derived from the judicial ruling that reduce the income of capital gains; increase the income of towns in danger of depopulation or review the restriction on indebtedness, imposed by the then minister Cristóbal Montoro as a way to control the debt of the municipalities after the 2008 crisis.
The municipalities also claim “institutional loyalty” to the autonomies so that they pay their outstanding debts derived from implementing new municipal services, which the municipalities must assume as an expense without having associated income. In addition, they ask to receive part of the taxes collected by the autonomous communities, to stop acting as collectors of these and that the European funds destined for the municipalities be channeled directly to the municipalities, without going through the intermediate administration.
