In times spending review, and on the day of the Anci protest (National Association of Italian Municipalities) check the accounts of the municipal administrations, to understand how and where they spend, and compare them with each other. This is done by Il Sole 24, which published yesterday a ranking of the expenses of the Italian Municipalities, based on the elaboration of the Siope data, the information system of the Ministry of Economy.
A ranking that describes thetrend of the "intermediate consumption" of the Municipalities, and from which somewhat unexpected data emerge, and which certainly speak for themselves.
For example, in Rome, for external consultancy, you spend 5 times more than in Milan: 2600 euros for every hundred inhabitants against 465. Always to remain in the comparison between the two major Italian cities, public transport in Milan costs 60% more than in Rome, even if the service is much better.
Other surprising data are certain primates, such as that of Enna, where the waste service spends, again in relation to the number of inhabitants, practically 4 times more than the national average, and to a much greater extent also compared to those Municipalities, such as Novara and Salerno, indicated by Legambiente as the most virtuous .
Lucca, on the other hand, excels in the maintenance costs of the municipal offices, which cost five times the average, while in Palermo and Naples, office cleaning mysteriously costs 0 euros, according to the accounts, while Chieti beats everyone in terms of stationery costs (costs that cost Italian municipalities 1,2 billion euros a year). Another fascinating fact is that of auxiliary services for municipal buildings, for which Potenza spends 7500 euros per 100 inhabitants, while Ascoli Piceno does not go beyond the 500 euro limit.
And maybe it's just that, these unexplained differences between the consumption of one administration and another, with outrageously inflated expenses without the response of a proportionally better service, the real crux of the matter, the mystery to be unraveled and resolved, in the days when the Municipalities, faced with the harshness of the cuts, cry out for misery and risk collapse.
The hope, faced with certain numbers, is that the spending review, thanks also to the data processing by Siope, really manages to cut waste, and there is some, eliminating the superfluous without touching the substantial.
