One bomb after another for the Capitoline administration of Ignatius Marino entrenched in the palaces of the Campidoglio. Yesterday evening the Treasury Ministry announced a new hole worth 360 million euros caused by the payment of accessory salary to the 23 employees of the Municipality of Rome from 2008 to 2013. Therefore, the new bomb dropped on Ignazio Marino is a legacy of the old Alemanno administration and seems all the more a joke for the mayor of the capital given that it was he who last year fought against the unions to reform the contract of Capitoline employees by establishing the new decentralized contract.
An even greater insult if we consider another element: it was Ignazio Marino himself, as soon as he took office on the Capitoline hill, who picked up the phone and called the Treasury inspectors to ask for a detailed report on the situation in the Municipality. Among other things, the evidence underlined by the General State Accounting Office is not an order to return the money "wasted" on bonuses and ancillary wages in the Alemanno era but rather a report. He will be up to Court of Auditors establish whether the fact constitutes a tax damage and whether it will thus be necessary to proceed to repay the money by taking it from the (empty) coffers of the Municipality and not asking it directly from the 23 employees. In case of repayment of the sums disbursed illegitimately from 2008 to 2013, Marino will have to make an important choice: reset the fund (which today amounts to 62 million euros per year) or take it from another party?
By resetting the fund, the money would be returned in less than 6 years but it is a hypothesis that is difficult to realise, given that we are already talking about public order problems and reduction of basic services in the event of zeroing or reduction of the accessory salary fund. In fact, if Marino were to decide to mow the fund on the accessory salary, he knows well that he will meet the protests of the employees of the Municipality (in the year of the extraordinary Jubilee) but also those of citizens who would not benefit from important services such as nursery schools, municipal police and municipal offices.
Added to this are also the statements by Luigi Nieri, one of the strong men of the Marino administration who could turn his back on the mayor and side with the employees: “If we take the decision to cancel the junta, a minute before I tender my resignation. I should already do it now for what I have heard or said”, the lapidary words of Nieri, deputy mayor but above all councilor for personnel who, therefore, openly sides with the employees of the Municipality of Rome. A clear position that could bring Marino's already limping work to its knees.
The mayor declared in an interview with the newspaper 'Il Messaggero' that Nieri is "wounded because as a man of the left he carried forward the decentralized contract which removed the privileges distributed on old ancillary wages, allowing the opening of the municipal offices in the afternoon . I don't think Nieri will leave – said Marino who then added – but he is caught between two fires ”.
Also during the interview with Messaggero, the mayor of the capital wanted to underline that the city is following a "virtuous path" and that "it would be an upside-down world where the only mayor who had the courage to let the Capitol of 20.000 people in order to block privileges, valuing merit, will now be penalized ". In any case, Mayor Marino is stubborn to go on even if with each passing day he is more and more alone, almost completely abandoned by his party and by Renzi who in recent days had said "if Marino knows how to govern governments, otherwise he will go home ”. To this has now been added the grain of Luigi Nieri who, in the event of his resignation, could push his party, SEL, to the opposition in the Capitoline assembly, thus putting a tombstone on the experience of Ignazio Marino on the Capitol.
