Les chambres régionales des comptes

[2) An increasing rationalization of the activities

The regional activity of the rooms of the rooms is recent. By progressive adjustment or experiment, of the processes of rationalization of the activity of the magistrates allowed an adaptation to different situation.

The perimeter of investigation is freely chosen, which allows for example, the installation of check procedures fast for the small accounts. The CRC of the Midday-Pyrenees set up check procedures fast for the small accounts. A team of an adviser and 2 assistants deals with the community of less than 3.000 inhabitants and whose budget is lower than 10 MF.

The CRC of Aquitaine worked out a device on four levels : normal, selective control on a given topic, accelerated control and a control for the very small accounts

With the instigation of Jacques Pages, President of section, an equivalent system was set up within the regional room of high-Normandy. «  It y have creation of a cell of auditing [allowing the routinisation of the treatment of the small accounts]... I of it am responsible on the level for the administrative staff... there are two magistrates who are there to bring in room all that relates to this cell »^42(*).

It is true that many small accounts often posed some problems, because quite simply of the imposing number of communes in France.

The reform of 1988 made it possible to cure to some extent this type of problem by entrusting to the higher accountants of the Treasury (the Treasurers General Payers and particular receivers of finances) the administrative auditing of accounts of the communes or groupings of communes whose population does not exceed 2.000 inhabitants and whose amount of the receipts does not exceed 2.000 million Francs.

What allowed that the number of judgments given under the control of the accounts is divided by two or three, thus making « to leave » some 24.000 communes.

Symbol of a purely technical measurement and making the object of a consensus on behalf of all the parts (elected or magistrates), the Court of Auditors, in his public report/ratio of 1991, had raised that this reduction allowed its concentration on the control of the great communities and the important publicly-owned establishments.

[3) The autonomy of the magistrate

The advisers of each section^43(*) provide proposals for a control in n-1 for year N, with a temporal estimate for the duration of each control. There still, the methods of work of the rooms can vary according to places'. Some can be however the room for maneuver of the advisers in the programming of controls collégialement definite, engagements of the rooms towards four-year control minimizes the room for maneuvers.

Nevertheless, it is true that each magistrate, once his defined program, is more or less free to organize in a free way his diary.

Its activity is connected here with that of the liberal expert exerting his art with complete freedom and this state of mind, aiming at promoting the autonomy of action of each magistrate, is sincerely hoped. This is why the control exerted by the President of room is more formal than material, even if there remains real.

We here will take various examples, extracts of the gazette of the communes^44(*).

Maurice Banos, 65 years, resulting from the Directorate-General of the taxes, is to advise CRC since 1983 (Lorraine, Franche-Comté then the Rhone-Alps), including seven years in the function of commissioner government. He has been a President of section for five years.

With with the head of the third section of the CRC, it animates a team made up of seven magistrates and nine assistants of checking, and it chairs, every Wednesday, the meetings of deliberated relating to its section.

It is associated the development of the annual programme of control of the room (stopped by the president) and takes part in the coordinating committee which meets every week (president, presidents of section, representative of the public ministry, secretary-general, clerk).

«I let work my magistrates. Some, before stopping their topics of control, discuss it with me, others not. Some count the days devoted to each file, others not. I am not behind them the every day, but we have at least a formalized appointment of stage, in June, to note the progress report of the checking routine. I do not correct the reports/ratios presented by the magistrates, because some would take the fact very badly that one asks them to rectify. For the draft letters of observations intended for the directors, on the other hand, it sometimes happens to me to rewrite, before submitting them to the president. Qualities which a president of section must express are the broadmindedness and the availability - without speaking about competence, obviously ».

Jean-Pierre Closes, 42 years, is to advise of administrative court (ten years of practice in Clermont-Ferrand then in Lyon), of mobility with the CRC since 1996.
The adviser of CRC is, simultaneously, rapporteur when it informs his own files (control of the accounts of the public accountants, examination of the management of the local authorities, budgetary check procedures) and judges when it takes part in the deliberations of his section or those of the CRC on the dossiers presented by his colleagues.

«In an administrative court, one is determined only according to the writing. In CRC, even if one finds heaps of things in the bundle, control is also done through the relations with controlled, and it is most interesting. One often says to us, in the communities, which would have been lost if the rules had been complied with, time. It returns to us to show which are the legal and financial risks incurred by not complying with the rules. We are in position of saying: in the future do not do any more that.

Because better, with my direction, a regulation is worth which passes by our intermediary that by the penal judge. This trade must be approached with prudence and circumspection. Within the framework of the examination of management, how to think that one will do in a few weeks what the control of legality did not do in several years? It is not enough to have the capacity all to control, still is necessary it to have the average materials of them. Amateurism could be a risk. To be satisfied to say, by taking stock of ten years of a contract of delegation of public utility, «That missed», would seem a little easy to me... «

Gerard Jousserand, 51 years, adviser of CRC since 1986 (Champagne-Ardenne until 1991, the Rhone-Alps then), is from now on a government Commissioner.
«The government commissioner, representative of the public ministry, must bring to the room a certain legal safety, by taking care that the decisions taken are in conformity with the law and jurisprudence. About thirty magistrates to the room means as many different points of view. The government commissioner must try to standardize the decisions returned by the CRC, the more so as it can create different behaviors according to sections' ».

Its daily newspaper consists in writing «conclusions» on the reports/ratios presented by the examining magistrates (in an obligatory way for the judgments, optional for the examination of the management of the communities), and attends the meetings of deliberated for the most important files. It is also used for legal adviser for his colleagues and the assistants of checking.

«When I was a magistrate of the seat, I found that the public ministry was too demanding, and that he did not want to take into account realities of ground. Become government commissioner, I changed role instantaneously, and it is me, now, which focuses the reactions of mood, because I am perceived like a spoilsport. The government commissioners are there to make respect the law, and they cannot have any state of heart, if not they would be discredited. »

* ⁴² Extracts of the discussion with Mr. Ducourt, Assistant of checking to the regional room of High-Normandy.

* ⁴³ B. Boyer, R. De Castelnau, Portrait of the regional rooms of the accounts, L.G.D.J, 1997. P.34-35

* ⁴⁴ Drawn from the Gazette from the n°47 communes, pp. 15-16.