A government amendment to the Pnrr decree which will enter the heart of the examination in the Chamber next week opens the doors of the Municipalities to 15 thousand hiring of fixed-term technicians for the implementation of the Recovery Plan projects.
The corrective introduces an extra space within the spending limits, which measure the hiring possibilities of local authorities on the basis of the ratio between stable income and the cost of salaries. And above all, it offers a concrete response to the cry launched on several occasions by the mayors on the risk of seeing a large part of the 40 billion allocated by the National Plan to local authorities fade due to the impossibility of implementing interventions and investments with an administrative structure that has lost its role in the last ten years. 20% of staff (Sole 24 Ore of November 16). “The government has accepted the alarm we raised at the Anci assembly in Parma,” comments the president of the Association of Municipalities Antonio Decaro.
The smart coefficient
The novelty, which among other things will enter the decree on the PNRR of which the vice-president of Anci Roberto Pella (Fi) is the speaker, translates into practice the promise made two weeks ago by the minister for PA Renato Brunetta in the hearing on the decree 152. On that occasion, the owner of Palazzo Vidoni had spoken of an “intelligent coefficient” to allow municipalities to recruit the technicians indispensable to the NRP without undermining the “financial sustainability” that guides the rules on the staff of local authorities after the farewell to the turnover. «We were committed to finding a quick and decisive solution. Today it has arrived “, underlines the Minister for the Public Administration. The new rule, now being defined on some technical details in a general system by now defined, took shape with the Ministry of Economy and with the push of the Ministries of Regional Affairs and Mezzogiorno: all under the direction of Palazzo Chigi. A team effort summarized yesterday at Palazzo Chigi by the meeting between the Anci leaders and the undersecretary to the presidency Roberto Garofoli with the ministers Brunetta, Gelmini and Carfagna: half a government to indicate how hot the dossier is. “We solve the problems highlighted by the Municipalities without putting the consolidation of the accounts at risk”, underlines Laura Castelli, Deputy Minister for the Economy with responsibility for local finance.
Pnrr and sustainability to be kept together
On the technical level, in fact, the most complicated junction was represented by the need to keep together the reasons of the NRP with those of the sustainability of local budgets. Today the possibilities of recruitment in the Municipalities are parameterized on the ratio between stable income and personnel expenses recorded in the financial statements. To this basis, the new rule will add a piece, measured as a percentage of the hiring expenditure granted by the rules in force: the parameter will increase as the size of the entity decreases. The novelty travels with another arriving in an interpretative way. The public function is working on a circular on article 1 of the Recruitment decree (Legislative Decree 80/2021) which opens to the Municipalities the rapid procedures for the recruitment reserved by the decree for Public Administrations “holders of interventions provided for in the Pnrr”: wording that literally excludes local authorities, often implementing projects owned by ministries.
Up to 15 thousand hires
With the new mechanism, hiring will be self-financed by the Municipalities, with an expansion of the rules that can free up expenditure of up to 600 million, for a number of contracts that can reach 15 thousand. For small municipalities, however, there is an extra help, with a fund of 30 million. Another 67 million will be allocated for the recruitment of technicians in the southern municipalities. “The agreement seals the technical work of these weeks”, says Palazzo Chigi.
But the amendment goes a step further. Because to harness the administrations of the Municipalities there is also an old limit, which prevents them from exceeding the expenditure for fixed-term contracts recorded in 2009. It is one of those archaeological constraints (it is established by article 9, paragraph 28 of Legislative Decree 78 / 2010, among the first measures decided at the time to counter the sovereign debt crisis) also cited by the Pact of Palazzo Chigi among the constraints to be archived. The new fixed-term contracts in the Municipalities made possible by the amendment will be able to circumvent that ceiling.