Return of the turnover ceiling in municipalities? The hypotheses on the table of the manoeuvre

The work around the amendments to the budget law is beginning to intensify as the decisive phase of its examination in the House committee approaches. And in the chapter on local authorities, the focus is on the return of the cap on turnover, which, as for many other central and territorial PAs (not health), will require that next year no more than 75 per cent of the savings produced by retirements and other exits this year when there are more than 20 permanent employees be allocated to new hires.

The return of the cap on turnover is 'unsustainable and intolerable', thundered the newly elected president of Anci, Gaetano Manfredi, on Thursday in his report to the mayors gathered in Turin. And yesterday at the assembly of the National Association of Municipalities came the first governmental openings. 'I hope that in these weeks there will be a way to find more space and further reduce this cut, working with the Mef and my friend Giancarlo Giorgetti,' explained the minister for the Pa Paolo Zangrillo, saying he hoped for 'at least partial modifications'. The holder of the accounts, moreover, in the parliamentary hearing on the manoeuvre had said he was open to possible revisions for some sectors, starting with security, and to an analysis to better understand where the limit was more or less justified.

There are two hypotheses on the table. The first, lighter one, aims to exclude from the ceiling a range of professional profiles considered more strategic and indispensable, from educators to urban police to social workers, who in the recent past had already been the recipients of tailor-made regulations to try to better guarantee the necessary coverage of local services.

But the most ambitious idea remains in the field, which aims to exclude local authorities altogether from the return of the new ceiling. Also because the little more than 159.6 million euros of savings attributed to the application of the cap on turnover 'remain annually acquired to the budgets of the entities', as stated in Article 110, paragraph 9 of the budget law. Much, as always happens in the final squeeze of budget laws, will depend on the overall balances, political and not just technical, that will arise when the amendments are finally formulated.

On the subject, however, a certainty has also arrived, and it is not a positive one for the recruitment prospects of local administrations. The Autonomies section of the Court of Auditors, in its resolution 19/2024 deposited yesterday, has in fact confirmed the impossibility of excluding the costs of contractual increases from the calculation of ceilings on personnel expenditure. The hypothesis had been raised by the Liguria section, on the basis of a request made by the Municipality of Genoa. But this path, which would free up many resources for recruitment in this phase that the 2019/21 renewal is now flanked by the negotiations on the 2022/24, for the accounting magistrates remains precluded by the fact that such an exclusion would have an incremental effect over time that would in fact nullify the spending limits established in the name of 'financial sustainability' of staff costs.