2023-11-16 17:41:34
In town halls, volunteering no longer holds. In a “flash report” published a few days before the congress of mayors, senators Françoise Gatel (UDI), François Bonhomme (LR) and Eric Kerrouche (PS) evoke an “urgency to act”, recalling that “fair compensation” for elected officials is a “major democratic issue”. If the exercise of a local mandate is built around the principle of gratuity, “dedication does not necessarily rhyme with sacrifice”, they warn.
However, only a third of local elected officials currently receive compensation, even though they devote on average 32 hours per week to their mandate. The “Commitment and proximity” law of 2019 made it possible to increase the compensation of mayors and deputies of municipalities with less than 3,500 inhabitants from 20 to 50%. But inflation and the vocations crisis have “changed the situation”, warn the authors, for whom too often the local mandate financially penalizes those who exercise it, which favors retirees to the detriment of more diversified profiles.
To support their proposals, senators readily use the financial argument. Replacing these same elected officials with category A civil servants would cost the State 3.4 billion euros, “or 2.3 times more than currently”. Without returning to the principle of free mandates, they recommend indexing compensation to inflation and revaluing them for all municipalities between now and the next municipal elections in 2026. To compensate for the role played by the mayor as auxiliary to the State (civil status, elections, etc.), they also propose to create a specific contribution from the State.
Still on the financial side, the senators want to make it compulsory for the State to cover the transport costs of municipal elected officials for municipalities with less than 3,500 inhabitants. So many measures which would cost the State 153 million euros per year. If municipal elected officials were replaced by category A civil servants, the bill for the State would be increased by 1.9 billion euros, according to the senators.
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