Matteo Lepore: “We mayors are also asking for help to cope with the expensive bills”

Today the historic centers of many Italian cities and towns will be darker for a few minutes. It will go off at 20in fact, one protest against falling billsconceived by Edoardo Accorsi, mayor of Cento, in the province of Ferrara, but spread in a short time first in the rest of Emilia Romagna and then throughout Italy.

For half an hour some buildings of the municipalities participating in the initiative will turn off their lightssimulating what could happen if the situation does not improve rapidly: that is the drastic decrease of some services related to electricity.

Yes, why of the rise in billswhich in some cases even reach 400% not suffer only private citizens and businesses, but also the municipal administrationswhich suddenly find themselves budgeting extra costs that are often unsustainable.

To bring the protest initially only in Emilia on a national level was also the position of theAnciNational Association of Italian Municipalities, which esteems for municipal administrations an increase of at least 550 million euros on a total annual expenditure for electricity that oscillates between 1.6 and 1.8 billion euros and for this reason asks the Government for more answers. Otherwise, as stated by the president of the association and mayor of Bari, Antonio Decaro, the risk is that many administrators find themselves “having to choose between safeguarding budget balances and providing services to citizens”.

Among the mayors to join with greater conviction to the initiative there is Matteo Lepore, mayor of Bolognaworried for his city and for the people who live there but above all for the small realities that risk not making it with this situation.

Mayor, how much could the expensive bills affect the budget of your municipality?
“Much. We estimated that in Bologna the annual incidence at present would be around 15 million euros. But my biggest concern is not about the city I manage. Even if in the absence of targeted investments or measures by the Government we too could be forced to make some cuts, I am sure that we would be able to cope with the expenditure because we have a budget that, not counting investments, reaches around 600 million euros and we are a municipality with the accounts in good standing.

The biggest problems would be the medium or small ones who could be forced to decrease services or raise taxes. Considering that about 80% of Italians live in such contexts, the risk is seriously that of bringing a very high number of citizens and businesses to their knees, already oppressed by a historical phase characterized by growing inflation and social crisis ».

If things didn’t change quickly which services could they skip?
“Obviously, each case is separate but in general everything that is financed by the municipalities with current expenditure and therefore kindergartens, services for the elderly and business support as far as the fiscal part is concerned, it is at risk.

If the administrations find themselves managing economic difficulties that jeopardize the stability of the budget, they will necessarily have to make cuts to reach balance and the intervention sectors can only be these. Unfortunately, the real risk is that of having to erode primary services because we come from years of intense spending review in which all the superfluous has already been eliminated. There is no longer any waste from which to draw, on the contrary, it can be said that by now the administrations have scraped the bottom of the barrel ».