THE SYSTEM OF LOCAL ACTION
IN THE POLITICAL ARENA
[1) Local public
problems
Some local examples, taken in the local press Norman, illustrate
the types of situations met by the financial magistrates.
That can be the case of a budgetary problem. At the beginning of
2000, the board of directors of the hospital of Le Havre had refused to vote
the budget and had retransmitted the object of the dissension to the regional
room of the accounts, because of the deficit « structural of the
establishment » and in order to stigmatize the absence with financial
solutions.
Let us take the case of the management of the commune of
Bridge-Audemer, reported by the Awakening of October 2, 1996, illustrated by
the skids related to the construction of a sporting complex :
non-observance of the procedure of invitation to tender, misses transparency on
the decision-making process of the company charged to carry out the complex,
nonconformities of work and non-observance of the initial schedule of
conditions. Moreover, work exceeded the initial estimate, heavy on the debt of
the commune.
According to the terms of the report/ratio produced by the
magistrate of the accounts and brought back in the newspaper :
« Thus the debt was at 82,5 million francs at December 31, 1991 and
approached, the following year, of the 100 million francs. It reached 10.653
francs then per capita, that is to say close to the double of the national
average (5.717 francs) and of the regional average (5.484 francs) for the
communes belonging to the same layer of population. »
And the report/ratio to specify, a little further :
« Until 1995, the products of operation did not make it possible to
cover the totality of the financing of the refunding and operating costs of the
debt, of or margin of self-financing running a negative. In addition, the
mobilization of the resources intern was not sufficient to ensure the community
a capacity of self-financing of its investments ».
The control of the management of the city or the community often
makes it possible to highlight errors or embezzlements. The echoes, on
September 19, 2000, reports a letter of observation emanating from the regional
room of the accounts, in which the magistrates would have belonged to
« anomalies of management in the construction of a carpark of 535
places in the university regional hospital complex of Rouen
(CHUR) .......... The CRC notes that this assembly has
« license to proceed, without legal enabling and call with
competition, the realization of the labor market », whose total cost
rose to 27 million francs ». Once the noted damage, it does not
remain any more with the community but to assume a plan of austerity which
sanctions the liability or to call directly upon the basket of the State.
For the commune of Valley-of-Reuil, subjected to a financial
rectification, the conclusions of the financial liability seem positive,
according to the remarks reported by the journalist of
« Paris-Normandy », on April first, 2000. For Bernard
Amsallem, the mayor : « The strongest difficulty was lived
by the inhabitants and in particular the owners who saw the land taxes
increasing considerably. This rise of tax could have been avoided if the
rectification had really been done in seven years ». « The
rise in the local impositions brought 4,6 million francs as of the end 1998
..... Under the ministry for the interior, the State granted 4,6 million francs
of exceptional subsidies.
As for the deputy François Loncle, it is delighted
especially « to see the city preserving the European funds and to
take an interesting option towards a forthcoming intercommunality ».
The liability was 37 million francs. The installation of an interdepartmental
mission, animated by the prefect Thierry Klinger, made it possible to maintain
the plans of economic and social development while making fall down the
liability on levels compatible with the way of life of the community.
Also, the elected officials, vis-a-vis the production of the
regional rooms of the accounts, are perplexed. Because it is at the same time a
resource for the applicants with the armchairs of the municipal officials in
place and a constraint, because it will be necessary well to manage a problem
arrived on the public scene.
Witness of this prospect, animated debates of the town council of
Rouen, published in « Paris-Normandy » on September 20,
2000, between the former mayor, François Gautier and the new one, Yvon
Robert. « Battles of figures punctuated by the graphs
(impromptu ?) from the mayor, one passed to the lower blows, each one
endeavouring to find defects in the armor of the adversary :
« you made carry out one audit of kindness in 1995 to blacken the
table » François Gauthier affirmed before exhuming a
report/ratio of the CRC of 1996 stressing that the SIVOM had carried out
several operations on the building site of the subway without invitation to
tender....In his answer, Yvon Robert deplored the recourse of Bertrand
Bellanger to the late ones : « what makes it possible to occult
the debate and to reject unworthiness on the others ». Returning on
the subway, the mayor affirmed that its predecessor had quite simply sabotaged
the file « for not that the Socialists can use it in the countryside
of 1995 ».
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