After a long wait, the national government approved yesterday a local government reform package. It is good that competition rules could be clarified and redundant services could be avoided, although there are sure risks that regional governments and town councils could reach agreements that the former will pay for and the latter will have to manage.
If you don't have to pay for it, you're probably not concerned with how much it cost. The biggest problem with this bill, besides shrinking town counselor salaries by 82%, is that it does not cut down the number of municipal governments and has noticeably increased the power of town councils. A hotbed of favoritism that citizens have no control over, it is now necessary to reduce the number of municipal governments with over-paid leaders so that signs of corruption are further weeded out of Spanish government.
There have been major advances in controlling spending after giving inspectors greater independence. They will no longer depend on town majors and will answer to the Intervención General del Estado, Spain's national inspector service. This is surely slow down spending despite questionable legality. Interestingly, the changes have not been extended to the municipalities' public companies.
