Comunicación presentada el 21 de enero de 2021 en el 30 Congreso Internacional de Innovación Colaborativa
1. Summary
The merger of municipalities has already proven its efficiency in many European countries. In Spain there are also preliminary studies that even quantify it at more than € 16,000 million / year for a merger of more than 20,000 inhabitants / municipality.
Comparing the average of the expenses of personnel / inhabitant / year of the municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants and that of the more efficient small ones (2000 to 4000 inhabitants) we see that their cost is 11% higher. But the main comparison is that of the public services received by residents of the municipality of more than 20,000, including police, theatre, museums or libraries, with those received by small municipalities.
The comparison of costs of municipalities with districts in the Region of Murcia shows their efficiency in personnel expenses like those that do not have them in La Rioja or all Spain
2. Rationales and Objectives.
The merger of municipalities has been an innovation followed in many European countries to improve efficiency in the provision of public services to citizens and in the expenditure of always scarce economic resources through an economy of scale.
The objectives are to show the inefficiency of maintaining independent municipal entities of only tens, hundreds, and even a few thousand inhabitants, compared to entities with more than 20,000 inhabitants
There have been studies for years that, although preliminary, pointed out the importance of these mergers of municipalities to achieve very important savings, such as the 2012 cost of the Autonomous State II: Autonomous and local administration(1), which even quantifies, although point out that in a preliminary way, a potential ANNUAL saving of € 16,142 million in those years if the merger of municipalities in Spain were carried out to municipalities with at least 20,000 inhabitants
If we want to talk about innovation in the Spanish public administrations and that this innovation generates the efficiency they need, in a country with a structural and chronic budget deficit, we will not find any other innovation that can generate such a volume of savings and contributions to the reduction of said public deficit than the merger of municipalities.
But it is evident that if this innovation, the merger of municipalities, has not been carried out in Spain, it is because there are enormous resistance to it that can only be overcome with the evidence of the data and, above all, with the reality that it is the only one way of obtaining savings to be used to continue maintaining the welfare state for neighbours, a basic and fundamental mission of all public administration
3. Methodology.
It had consist of comparing the data on personnel expenses per inhabitant in municipalities of different sizes obtained from the website that publishes the budgets of the Spanish municipalities and the services provided in both cases.
To see the legal functions assigned to municipalities by the mere fact of existing as an independent entity
And to see the functions provided by a couple of municipalities to their neighbors
4. Results
First, we extract the data from the municipalities of La Rioja and the Region of Murcia from the personnel expenses reported by the municipalities of the said Autonomous Communities, which allow us to compare them in relation to the number of inhabitants in the vicinity of the 20,000 inhabitants in Table No. 1
|
Municipality |
Inhabitants |
Expenses / person / year in personnel |
Totals expenses in personnel |
|
23.923 |
328,55 € |
7.859.814 € |
|
|
The sum of the 107 smallest municipalities in La Rioja of the 130 that in 2019 provided data |
24.059 |
347,00 € |
8.351.401 € |
|
The sum of the 28 municipalities of Murcia that provide data |
1.266.875 |
324,00 € |
410.583.305 € |
|
2.298 |
269,89 € |
620.200 € |
|
|
The sum of the 6 municipalities of Murcia with less than 10,000 inhabitants |
31.423 |
363,00 € |
11.416.486 € |
Table 1: Personnel expenses / hab / year in 2019 in municipalities of La Rioja and the Murcia Region. From the data of https://transparentia-municipal.newtral.es/(2) with data from the 2019 municipal budgets published there.
Second, in Table 2 we can see the average personnel expenses per inhabitant as a function of the number of inhabitants from 1 to 25,000 in Spain
|
Nº de Municipality |
Total Inhabitants |
Expenses / person / year in personnel |
Totals expenses in personnel |
|
|
20.000 a 25.000 |
73 |
1600582 |
405,2€ |
648.546.832€ |
|
10.000 a 20.000 |
278 |
3913752 |
400,6€ |
1.567.830.279€ |
|
5.000 a 10.000 |
419 |
2949352 |
385€ |
1.148.254.600€ |
|
4.000 a 5.000 |
137 |
612454 |
382€ |
234.003.272€ |
|
3000 a 4000 |
196 |
681.123 |
367,00 € |
250.001.894 € |
|
2000 a 3000 |
323 |
789727 |
364€ |
287.735.550€ |
|
1000 a 2000 |
601 |
856595 |
384€ |
328.705.294€ |
|
1 a 1000 |
2832 |
897084 |
394€ |
353.703.402€ |
Table 2: Average personnel expenses per inhabitant as a function of the number of inhabitants from 1 to 25,000. From the data of https://transparentia-municipal.newtral.es/ (2) with data from the 2019 municipal budgets published there.
Third, From Law 7/1985, of April 2, Regulating the Bases of the Local Regime(3), and other mandatory laws, summary of the functions of legality, bureaucratic, without public value for citizens, that every municipality must comply regardless of whether it has 5, 50, 500 or 500,000 inhabitants:
1. Municipal Inventory of Assets and Rights.
2. Municipal register of inhabitants: registrations, cancellations and communications.
3. Approve and justify the annual budgets, as well as the general account. Send it to CCAA and State
4. Call for sessions of collegiate bodies (plenary session, informative commissions, local government board), as well as send notifications, write minutes of the session, and referral of acts and Agreements to the CCAA and the AGE.
5. Application for subsidies from Public Administrations.
6. Manage the hiring of the grant awarded and justify it.
7. Administrative agreement for the provision of social services with the CCAA.
8. Administrative agreement for the maintenance of the secretary-Intervention position.
9. Public contracting files with updating of the information that regarding administrative contracting must be sent to other Public Administrations.
10. General electronic registry of the Corporation.
11. Guarantees regarding transparency and public information.
12. Tax collection registers: IBI, vehicles even if the collection management is delegated.
13. Registers of water, cleaning and sanitation rates, although the collection management has been delegated
Fourth, From the website of a municipality like Calahorra(4) with 23,923 inhabitants, it has the following added value services in addition to the bureaucratic ones for compliance with the law:
Agriculture and Environment
Town planning
Citizen Service Office
Municipal Drug Plan
OMIC
Local Economic Promotion Office
Education
Municipal School of Music
Workshop Schools
Commerce
Aid and Subsidies
Service Park
Municipal Water Service
Social services
Santos Mártires Municipal Infant School
Saint Lazarus
Tourism
Culture, Education, Celebrations
Equipments and services
library
Archive
Ideal Theater
Museum of Romanization
Vegetable museum
Deán Palacios cultural center
Ermita de la Concepción cultural room
Pilgrims hostel
Holy House
Culture
Education
Municipal School of Music
Schools
Celebrations and traditions
Bullring
Local police
HR / Employment
Fifth, Let's focus on Cervera for its almost exclusive peculiarity of having districts in La Rioja:
Squad early 2020:
1 Secretary- controller
1 Treasurer- Accountant
2 administrative
1 job promotion agent
1 person multiple services
4 people: electricity, plumbing, masonry and gardening
3 multi-service operators
1 cleaning worker
2 responsible and technical in early childhood education
2 in library
2 sports coach and youth
1 adult school teacher
Total 21 people
5. Conclusions
1. Due to the fact of existing as independent entities, municipalities, regardless of the number of inhabitants they have, must comply with a wide range of legal obligations that do not add public value and that are easily object of economies of scale by merging them as they require to be executed by highly qualified personnel, the municipal secretaries
2. Comparing the personnel expenses of a municipality of 24,000 inhabitants with the same expenses of the sum of the 107 smallest municipalities of La Rioja until reaching 24,000 inhabitants as well, we see that the expenses of the only municipality are lower by 6 %.
3. But 6% lower spending is nothing, if we do not put it in relation to the services received by the inhabitants of the municipality of 24,000 inhabitants: from local police, to theater, museum, to music school or library , and the almost null services that the inhabitants of the small municipalities receive.
4. When comparing the greatest experience, if not the only one in Spain, in large municipalities and with numerous districts, that of the Murcia Region, we see that the efficiency of spending is maintained and, surely, with the same services as in the town of 24,000 inhabitants of La Rioja, as shown by the fact that the average expenditure / inhabitant / year of the 6 Murcia municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants is even higher than that of the small ones in La Rioja
5. Cervera del Rio Alhama with 2,298 inhabitants and 5 districts has much lower expenses, € 269.89 / inhabitant / year than the small municipalities and the larger ones too. With 21 people on staff who provide a varied catalog of valuable services, although not the most expensive as a police officer
6. At the level of the whole of Spain and for populations of up to 25,000 inhabitants, in population sections and obtaining the average of their personnel costs per inhabitant, those with the lowest cost are those of 2000 to 4000 inhabitants, with 11% less cost than the average of municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants. But we have to think about the multiple services listed on the Calahorra website, a municipality with 24,000 inhabitants, compared to those we deduced from the Cervera del Rio Alhama template, more detailed than the map on its municipal website, which with be important, they do not reach 50% of those in Calahorra
7. The merger of municipalities must be undertaken for either of these two reasons:
a. For reasons of economic savings. Let us think about the cost of services such as the local police, a theater or a museum that could be distributed among the small municipalities, after the merger, districts.
b. For reasons of, by means of the economy of scales, to be able to eliminate expenses that are merely bureaucratic of legality, and to transfer them to value-added services with a decentralized approach to providing them in what are now municipalities and would become districts of a single municipality whose name would be new so as not to hurt susceptibilities, and even the seat of the city council could be rotating as in the EU its presidency, especially when the administration is already more and more only electronic.
1. Referencies
(1) UpyD Public Administration and Economy Groups (2012): The cost of the Autonomous State II: Autonomous and local Administration. Pro-greso and Democracy Foundation.
(2) Data from https://transparentia-municipal.newtral.es/
(3) Law 7/1985, of April 2, Regulating the Bases of the Local Regime.
(4) From the map of the Calahorra town hall website
Autor(es): Maximo Fraile Escrich. Expert in public policy evaluation
