The city of Estepona has hosted this Tuesday the celebration of the Governing Board of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), where the mayor of the town and first vice president of the organization, José María García Urbano, has requested defer the entry into force of the Waste Law to “not further strangle the municipal accounts of the town halls”.
Thus, it has indicated that “the city councils and councils are in favor of the environmental protection but the Waste Law arrives without solving the economic problem that is generated for local entities”.
In this sense, he has insisted that the “Legislative changes must be accompanied by a change in financing so as not to harm the already battered municipal accounts and not suppose a really unsustainable load”.
In the specific case of the Waste Law, the councilor and vice-president of the FEMP estimates that it may represent a additional spending for local governments of 1% of its overall budget, and that in the specific case of Estepona would mean a million euros.
García Urbano has pointed out that “the municipal budget gum cannot be stretched any further” since the municipalities “are facing an economic hole as a consequence of the Constitutional Court ruling that annulled the municipal capital gains; the increase in the prices of supplies, especially the excessive rise in the electricity bill; as well as the rise in the price of materials that is causing having to review the prices of the contracts”.
“Any new regulation, such as the Waste Law, that aggravates this situation -if does not come with financing for local governments- it is going to be really unaffordable” warns García Urbano, who denounces that the central government “continues failing to comply with the commitment to summon the National Commission of Local Administration before the end of the year, within which all these issues should be discussed”.
On the other hand, it has reiterated the need for a moratorium on the entry into force of Low Emission Zones (ZBE), since the Government has not yet published the Regulation that develops this regulation and without which the municipalities “can hardly draft the municipal ordinances for its implementation”.
Likewise, he has criticized that the Sánchez government has “vetoed in the parliamentary process of the General State Budgets all the FEMP amendments in this regard”. Some amendments that are “unanimous, without any ideological charge and that represent 100% of Spaniards and, therefore, it is difficult to understand why they are not included in the Budgets, leaving millions of Spaniards in the lurch, especially the most vulnerable who need of the help of their Town Halls to reach the end of the month”.