The public consortia law as the Brazilian Federation s new instrument of strength and its relationship with local development

Transcription

1 The public consortia law as the Brazilian Federation s new instrument of strength and its relationship with local development Vicente Y Pla Trevas I The government s strategic bet on strengthening the Brazilian Federation Strengthening the Brazilian Federation comprises president Lula s government strategic bet, with the objective of promoting a reunification of the country, which would allow for a new historic cycle of development, capable of facing the poverty s structural agenda, and that of the country s social and regional inequalities; and of simultaneously consolidating democracy for the expansion of citizenship. The strategic character of the Brazilian State s federative organization, for a country of continental dimensions, marked by great social and regional inequalities and possessor of a rich cultural and regional diversity such as ours, is of building a political and institutional structure of territorial division of powers, which allows for the articulation between different autonomous government spheres for the realization of a common enterprise 1. As follows, greater intergovernmental articulation and cooperation for shared management of public responsibilities could strengthen the three government spheres in the realization of its assignments, guaranteeing in this manner the provision of quality public services for the whole Brazilian population. Furthermore, the creation of new institutional arrangements of articulation and conciliation between federate members could provide the means for the creation of a new national development program that would allow for placing the country in the framework of the economic globalization process, which is being consolidated in the international arena. By these means, the federative system comprises an adequate political-institutional arrangement, sufficiently flexible for the formulation of a development project in the beginning of the millennia, which would be articulated simultaneously in different territorial spheres: locally and in sub-regional spaces, operated by municipalities, in a regional scale operated by State governments, in the country s different macro-regions, and in the Mercosul supranational scale of regional integration and integration of the country into South America s ambit. The Brazilian Federation must be improved not only with regards to its institutional frame but also with regards to the managerial and administrative strengthening of the government s three spheres. With respect to the degree of articulation and coordination between the government spheres, it should be noted that the federalist political-administrative tradition is insufficiently present in the country s intergovernmental relations ambit. A fundamental principle of federative relations implies managing a permanent tension between respecting the constitutional sovereignty of federate agents and interdependency, alliance, and cooperation, which result from the constitutional federative pact 2. However, what is observed in practice is the reoccurrence of a centralizing tendency by means of the federal government s apparatus, in a position by State governments that tends to fit into the pre-1988 constitutional framework, where 1 Aspasia Camargo, The unregulated Federation and the new Federative Pact, Fernando Abrúcio and Márcia Miranda Soares, Federative Networks in Brazil. Konrad Adenauer Foundation, São Paulo, 2001

2 municipalities are treated as mere administrative units, thus resulting in an excessive dependency toward intergovernmental transfers. The empowerment of the Brazilian Federation should be instigated through two main channels. Firstly, there should be fomenting of greater intergovernmental dialogue that would be capable of taking into consideration federative contentions, and that would promote the elaboration of a joint federative agenda that would lead to collective gains. Beyond a complex constitutional renegotiation regarding the allocation of competencies and resources, it should pertain to the development of greater intercommunication between federative members that would overcome traditional bilateral negotiations, and that would re-qualify intergovernmental relationships through the constitution of forums of federative treaties. In this sense, the singing of the Protocol for Federative Cooperation in March 13 th, 2003, between federal government representatives and Mayor s national entities during the IV March of Mayors to Brasilia, defined a joint agenda to be negotiated in consensus in the ambit of the Treaties and Federal Articulation Committee, which is coordinated by the Sub-management of Federative Matters of the Secretary of Political Coordination and Institutional Matters of the Republic Presidency. This effort for federal coordination has produced effective gains to federate agents, such as the incorporation of demands and interests of municipalities in the Tax and Social Security Reform, the new ISS Law, the Education-Salary Law, the School Transportation Law, and the splitting up of CIDE, among others. The 1988 Constitution: strength and challenge of Brazilian federalism The strengthening of Brazilian federalism occurred recently concurrently with the country s re-democratization process, which was largely stimulated by sub-national governments. In this sense, fiscal, administrative, and political decentralization of Brazil has been intimately associated to the country s democratization process. Besides supporting political-administrative decentralization, the 1988 Constitution transforms the federative structure of the Brazilian State, instituting the trinary federation, following the constitutional elevation of municipalities to the condition of federate agents. Finally, from the point of view of the relationship between public power and society, the 1988 Constitution inserts into the political agenda the themes of citizen participation and of social control in the creation and implementation of public policies. The decentralization process favored an innovation cycle for the creation and implementation of public policies in a local ambit, which integrated the new social actors in public administration. However, the end of the 90s is marked by the questioning of excess decentralization, and of municipalization of public policies, which were reflected in a localist political culture, which denotes itself self-sustaining, and in the consequent fragmentation of governmental programs in the territory 3 3 Marcus Melo e Flávio Rezende, Descentralization and Governance in Brasil, Article in the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, 2003

3 In this framework, there becomes more and more necessary to promote greater intermunicipal cooperation for the joint management of public services, and to develop a more pro-active role for the State (Provincial) government in the coordination and management of public policies in the sub-regional ambit. However, the creation of appropriate institutional instruments of intergovernmental cooperation has been denied in the 1988 Constitutional ambit, weakening the coordination of the country s decentralization process. This can be partly explained by the strong opposition toward the federal guardianship exerted by the military governments, which induced the constituents not to take into account the role of the federal government as an agent of articulation and mediation of federal dynamics. Furthermore, the simultaneity of the decentralization process, together with the crisis and consequent dismounting of the national-developmental State constituted another factor of uncoordination of this process 4. In any case, the elaboration of institutional mechanisms that would favor greater institutional articulation of the decentralization process should be equated in order to strengthen the Brazilian federation s institutional frame. Beyond the creation of new instruments of federal cooperation, the promotion of greater intergovernmental cooperation may imply a great transformation in the political and administrative culture of the ruling class, which suffers from generalized miopy with respect to the municipality s regional context and to the interdependency and integration of urban networks. In fact, a significant portion of the municipalist movement places the solution to all local problems in the increase of intergovernmental transfers, as if the municipality could, on its own, solve all the problems that affect its territory. In this context, experience in inter-municipal cooperation is still incipient in the country, in spite of the growing number of inter-municipal consortia that can be observed from the 90s onwards. It can be noted that these experiences are regionally concentrated in the Southeast and South of the country and sectorally, in the fields of health services (35% of the total of Brazilian municipalities), acquisition and joint use of machinery and equipment (12% of the municipalities), and treatment and disposal of garbage (around 4% of the municipalities) 5. Consequently, the country is characterized by insufficient articulation and integration of its territories in a sub-regional scale, that is, above the municipal sphere and inter-regionally in the ambit of States. The current state of territorial dissonance is severe since progressively the resolution of local problems transcends the politicaladministrative frontiers of a federate agent. As an example, we can cite the issue of environmental recuperation and protection, the management of hydrographic basins, and the treatment and disposal of solid waste, among others. Moreover, promoting local 4 Aspásia Camargo, The Mater Reform- Risks and Costs of an Incomplete Federalism, Brazilian Institute of Geography and ssatistics- IBGE, Research and Basic Municipal Information: Profile of Municipalities: Public Administration 2001, Rio de Janeiro-2003

4 development has been considered more and more a task to be realized in the sub-reginal sphere, where economic and social flows can be articulated and empowered. Thus, intermunicipal consortia have a great undertaking to accomplish in the promotion of regional development and in the creation of a more coherent and efficient system of public services provision. It is equally important that the State government exert its function of management coordination in the sub-regional ambit, as a means to consolidate the instances of horizontal cooperation among municipalities, and of acting as an intermediary agent that may coordinate the process of regionalization of public policies, providing technical and financial support to poorer municipalities. Perspectives of a greater federal articulation for reducing the country s regional inequality The universes of the 5562 brazilian municipalities are characteristics of a huge variety of local governments in regards to demographic densities, economic dynamic, tax collection and technical and managerial public administration capacities. A big number of brazilian municipalities do not possess enough effective capacity to exert the autonomy which is conferred to them by the Federal Constitution. This is reflected even more explicitly on the significant dependency of the municipalities on federal transfers for its sustainable financial survivor. Therefore, the Fundo of Municipal Participation represents the most important source of revenue to 80% of the Brazilian municipalities. This fact elapses from two facts: a reduced capacity to collect taxes due to the extreme poverty in some municipalities or the fiscal resignation of some municipalities that do not exert throughly its constitutional responsability to collect its taxables. It is necessary to take into consideration that 90% of the municipalities have less than habitants and that only 10% of this universe concentrates 73% of the urban population in the country. Therefore, there is a differentiated impact on the recent process of decentralization of public policy in the small brazilian municipalities that do not posses sufficient scale for the rendering of services. In this sense, an alternative for the majority of brazilian municipalities to fulfill its duties, and to qualify simultaneously to its own managerial and administrative capacities of the public machinery, resides on the exercise of intermunicipality cooperation that makes possible the gains in the provision of services in big scale and a bigger rationalization in the application of public resources. The Promise of the Public Consortia Law The main objective of the Republic Presidency initiative to elaborate a project that creates a new statute of Public Consortia was of complimenting the existing brasilian federative structure and to improve the federative constitution organization, instituted in As previously mentioned above, despite of Brasil already having an advanced federal structural organization, the Brazilian Federation did not have available, until now, instruments and mechanism of

5 articulation and cooperation of public federative policy of shared responsibility among the three spheres of government. In this sense, the public consortia creates instruments and provides new regulation to horizontal and vertical cooperation among the three spheres of governance, opening the possibility to potentialize the intervention of public power and to optimize and rationalize the application of public resources in the execution of responsibilities that are shared among the three spheres of government. of the federaorganization,