2024-10-02 08:44:06
« Personnel costs, which represent a quarter of community spending, are experiencing sustained growth, mainly driven by the ‘municipal bloc’.namely municipalities and intermunicipalities, observes the Court in a report, at a time when France’s public deficit is expected to exceed 6% of GDP in 2024. “While the workforce has increased significantly until recently, despite the absence of new transfers of skills, controlling their development is a central issue,” emphasize the magistrates.
The Sages of rue Cambon specify that the “ increase in numbers (since 2011) mainly concerned intermunicipalities ”, which developed over this period, and “nwas not compensated by an equivalent decrease in the municipalities “. They recommend a “gradual return of community staff ”, which employ around 2 million people, “ at their level of the early 2010s “, or a “reduction of 100,000 jobs”which would save 4.1 billion euros per year from 2030.
This potentially explosive proposal, whose motivations are contested by associations of local elected officials, echoes that of Emmanuel Macron who in 2017 considered removing 120,000 positions in the public service. “ Territorial personnel cannot be reduced to an accounting issue,” said the president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) David Lisnard in his written response, recalling that intermunicipalities “ are entrusted with skills which are not always previously exercised by the municipalities ».
In its outlook for 2024, the Court estimates the increase in community operating expenses at +5.4% over the first eight months of the year. In addition to personnel, they are driven by purchases of goods and services boosted by inflation, as well as by social spending linked to the increase in precariousness.
“Slippage”
Investment spending is also accelerating due to “ municipal electoral cycle », which logically sees the projects voted on at the start of the mandate come to fruition. However, not all communities are in good health, the report recognizes. As in 2023, municipalities and intermunicipalities are doing well, but this is less the case for the regions, and even less so for the departments, largely weighed down by the fall in transfer taxes for valuable consideration (DMTO) levied on real estate transactions.
On the revenue side, those of VAT, which replaces the housing tax on main residences, will not be as good as hoped, so that the financial trajectory of communities is “increasingly slipping” compared to what was predicted by the public finance programming law 2023-2027, warns the Court.
While Prime Minister Michel Barnier wishes to reduce the public deficit below 3% of GDP by 2029, the Court is imagining ways to “ participation » of communities, recalling that the latter represented 17.8% of public expenditure in 2023. The report recommends “ consolidate and pool purchases » between communities, a potential source of 5 billion euros in savings per year, and to refocus their investments on the ecological transition.
Rather than regulating expenditure, which communities are firmly opposed to in the name of the constitutional principle of free administration, magistrates are counting on a “slowdown in revenue growth “. What could happen at the end of “ indexation of cadastral rental values of property taxes to inflations » or “the capping of part of the VAT dynamic », first recipe for communities.
« We cannot subscribe to a proposal consisting of inducing (…) a jaws effect in the budget of communities”replied the president of Urban France Johanna Rolland. The AMF denounced the “brutality of these proposals ”, which according to her would lead “to an unprecedented weakening of the municipal bloc’s capacity to act”.
1728072940
#Eliminate #jobs #communities #shocking #proposal #Court #Auditors #save #money
