Reforming the government demands a deep analysis of how positions are divided among all public administrations, and that work entails nixing the unpopular notion that regional governments return to the national government all the services that they can't keep up with or that are being duplicated.
After 35 years of democracy, the economic crisis underscores that the government's public accounts are suffering, which is plenty of reason to analyze the structure of both regional and national government jobs in order to cut redundancies and inefficiencies.
The layout of the political scene since the general elections held last November (the Peoples' Party concentrated its power in national government and most regional and town governments as well) provides a unique opportunity: Spain can restructure government jobs. The country is currently one of the least centralized nations in the world, because initially the Constitution established a total of 22 jobs for each regional government and now that number has risen past 100 on average for each region and a total of 1,978 jobs collectively.
There were times when the regions could compete with the national government in hiring the most prepared civic servants by offering them higher salaries. Now it's necessary to do more than simply cut local government spending. We have to undertake a full analysis, reduction and modernization of all the administrations. The degree the decentralization shouldn't by synonymous with redundancy and unwise spending choices, but of transparency, professionalism and good management. Whatever decision is made will affect politicians, too, so they must set a good example.
