This lobbying is facilitated by our institutions

Everything again as before. Barely out of slump, banks have found their "business model" favorite: use the protection of the State to borrow not expensive, and then invest risky and pocket the profits... If have the moment leads to real change of regulation, the financial crisis will have had the merit of raising the citizen to the issues of incentives and the "Too Big to Fail". These dearly acquired lessons can be usefully applied to local communities.

Because local communities are reminiscent of the hated bankers: they are both spending, ultra-opaques and little responsibility. If you stack layers, their expenses settled around EUR 180 billion, sales increased by 50 since the beginning of the years 2000, compared to the 280 billion euros from the State budget. Of course, this explosion is explained in part by the transfer of the powers of the State, but not only. At constant perimeter of activity, they create about 35,000 positions of territorial officials per year, either... the equivalent of an official of the State on two departing at retirement.

It is possible that this extension of the scope of the local action responds to a request from the citizen, but it is more likely that she is going on in his back, both drift in total opacity: on the accounts of local communities, only summary information are occasionally available online on the website of the Ministry of finance. The local taxes leaf is unreadable. Who is responsible for the increase The municipality, the General Council

The solution to this drift has three inseparable components: freedom, transparency and accountability.

Freedom: should give communities the freedom to raise more taxes. In return, the financial contribution of the State should be reduced gradually to an explicit form of national solidarity, i.e. support for poorer regions. At present, 35 of the revenue of the communities are in direct origin of the State. This deeply continuing the operation of local democracy, and in this regard, the business tax reform is going in the wrong direction. To complete their budgets, local elected representatives have any incentive to lobbying so that the national taxpayer funds projects that local voters assign them. This lobbying is facilitated by our institutions. The overlapping of mandates, unique in the world institution, place the parliamentarians in perpetual conflict of interest between their national mandate and the mandate of local elected. Not to mention the senators, directly elected by local elected officials.

Transparency: as the shareholders of a company, taxpayers must receive detailed accounts and a signs of political responsibilities. A national organization must allow them to easily assess the various costs are managed compared to prevailing in the rest of the territory. This would allow local policy debate to focus on concrete issues. For example: why the treatment of waste water is much more expensive in our commune that also

Responsibility: communities must be able to go into debt in their own name, but also to fail. To reassure potential creditors, must therefore be put in place a procedure for both deterrent and realistic bankruptcy for the communities that would not be able to repay their debts. Currently, communities have not the right debt, except for investing. The State, as irresponsible, puts them under supervision, even if finance itself their financial differences.

To summarize, the State must stop consider communities as poorly high and irresponsible children, and no longer behave as these parents exceeded that, to keep their children in place, promise them more money. For communities, transparency and accountability are the price to pay for autonomy: the they really want