Bolojan: Some city halls exist only for employees, not for citizens

„On the local public administration side, reform is absolutely necessary, both due to the fact that, in many places, city halls cannot support their personnel expenses from the revenues they collect. The largest part of these must be ensured from the state budget. Now, in situations where a city hall cannot cover even its personnel expenses, it means that city hall does not exist for the citizens of that locality, but exists for its employees. Either we reduce these expenses and we can function on the current administrative structure, but with a much smaller number of employees and with lower expenses, because this is possible and is proven in many places, or we will be forced, when a political agreement is reached, to make an administrative reorganization and dissolve administrative units that are no longer justified due to the ratio between the population they serve and the costs to sustain the administration there. The administration package had three important directions,” says Ilie Bolojan.

He states that, from the perspective of increasing administrative capacity, it is important because it would make city halls more efficient.

„Everyone agreed with this. The second component is the decentralization part, where there is also an agreement and if this project will be adopted, we will certainly see the transfer to local authorities, decisions will be made closer to citizens and we will see assets that today are abandoned for years in many localities in the country, which cannot be valorized being under the administration of different ministries that do not have the capacity to take care of them, put to use for the citizens of those localities. And here things are in good order. On the component of increasing the efficiency of local administration, no solution was reached because this would have implied a personnel reduction in administration,” the Prime Minister adds.

According to the Prime Minister, the administration is sized based on a maximum number of positions that is related to the number of inhabitants, being „the only area where the government and parliament can act on the component of the maximum number of employees.”

Bolojan threatened to resign if coalition leaders do not approve his local administration reform