BOLZANO. For ten years – since the 2014 annuity reform – they made us believe that that regional law signed by the then presidents Ugo Rossi and Arno Kompatscher would have drastically cut the incomes of former regional/provincial councilors and the exorbitant figures that had been updated with the reviled 2012 law.
This would have led to millions in savings for the Region’s coffers. It was said that in this way the public body would have seen the return of around 30 million euros.
The return request
Unfortunately, as someone had already sensed at the time, this law had a “bug” capable of invalidating its savings effects, represented by the rule envisaged for former (or future former) councilors who had not yet met the requirements to receive the allowance life annuity (either due to lack of age requirement or because he is still in office).
In 2014, there were 40 councilors or former councilors waiting for an annuity who had been asked to return the updated amount they had already received, under the 2012 law, while waiting to develop the right to get it back. The total net present value assigned to these 40 was then 19,330,897.15 euros. Almost 20 million which the Region actually recovered then. Only to then be forced to return them, as they say, with interest.
The huge outlay
From 2014 to 2024, of those 40, 27 former councilors have already acquired the right to the lifetime allowance and to receive the maxi-advance of the updated annuity, which however was no longer the 2014 figure, but the one recalculated at the time for which the former councilor has met the requirements. The result is that for only 27 former regional councilors (therefore still 13 missing) the Region has already paid 18,291,964.38 euros, therefore it has lost almost all the money it had recovered and will have to pay out even more when all the former councilors on the list will have met the requirements.
It is a much higher amount than what was given after the 2012 law to councilors asking them to return everything in 2014. So after all this coming and going of money and a “corrective” law in the middle, which should have introduced a downward recalculation, the one who ultimately lost out was the Region. And ten years have passed, and the average present value calculation has led to higher figures.
An annuity of 1.8 million euros
Some figures far exceed those above one million euros received by some exes in 2012, which caused scandal in 2014. A councilor (the Council no longer provides names) who met the requirements in 2022 received a discounted figure of the life annuity of almost two million euros – 1,810,061.85 euros – to which will naturally be added the monthly allowance (around 3,000 euros net per month) which will in any case reach the former councilor as long as he lives and then the reversibility that Region will continue to pay.
There are two other former councilors who received from the Region an updated share of the annuity of 1,652,133.50 euros in one case in 2023 and 1,611,161.31 euros in another in 2022. And then again there is the share of 1,429,554.60 euros received from a councilor in 2017.
Degasperi’s question
The sensational figures emerge from the response that the president of the regional council, Roberto Paccher, provided to a question presented by the Trentino councilor Filippo Degasperi (Onda), who asked in detail the list of «so-called maxi-advances of annuities definitively recognized by 2014″ to date.
And given the contents of the response, Degasperi comments: «I have always said that Rossi’s law of 2014 was a scam. I waited disciplinedly for the application. Now it’s clear. And today I feel attacked by trade unionists who then run alongside those who passed the law.”
In the list of updated figures that the Region has continued to pay since 2014, in addition to the six cases out of 27 that exceed one million euros, there are still others around 800 or 900 thousand euros, some 690 thousand. The less “lucky” saw a current value of around 200 thousand euros liquidated and had to settle.
Who had to pay back
In 2014, it was shocking to discover that there were former regional councilors like Mauro Delladio who had received 1,322,000 euros, or Pino Morandini, Oskar Peterlini e Franz Pahl all above one million in discounted annuity (partly paid in advance).
Therefore the regional council changed the law and asked for part of the money back, even if not all of them did so, presenting appeal after appeal. In addition to the former councilors who were already receiving the annuity, there was a group of 40 or former councilors waiting to reach the age requirements who had in any case been given the updated quota. They had to return everyone. In 2014 the then Prime Minister Diego Moltrer made the names and figures public. Scrolling through the 40 names you can see that even then the councilors exceeded one million euros in total net present value Sabina Kasslaughter, Eva Klotz, Michl Laimer, Pius Leitner, Mauro Minniti, Hanspeter Munter. Among the Trentino people with the highest figures were Nerio Giovanazzi (more than 800 thousand euros) and around 600 thousand euros Marco Benedetti, Lorenzo Dellai e Franco Panizza.