They ended up cutting off the electricity in the street

“They started discussing the cutting of special pensions and ended up cutting the electricity in the street. The Government’s Emergency Ordinance passed yesterday has catastrophic consequences for many cities, but especially for Timişoara, European Capital of Culture 2023. Concretely, the Government requires us to cut 10% of expenses with already budgeted for the year 2023. For Timisoara, this means over 36 million lei”, wrote Dominic Fritz on Facebook on Saturday.

According to it, “goods and services” do not mean pens and chairs for officials, but also money for public lighting, for road repairs, for the financing of cultural projects, for the maintenance of green spaces or the bill for street cleaning.

“In the midst of the cultural capital, we are forced not only to stop part of cultural funding, but to cut expenses that make visitors welcome to a clean and well-kept city. The cuts to all these public services will be felt much more than just 10%. Because almost half a year has already passed, the money has been spent at the budgeted level, so of 10% of the annual budget must be made from the remaining amounts for the second half: that is, the real cuts are closer to 20%. How absurd is this in the context of over 15% inflation? How can we give less money for roads and lighting if the bills have actually increased?”, wrote the mayor of Timisoara.

It claims that “none of these it will not cover the hole in the state budget. In any case, we can only spend from our own income, that is, from local taxes and taxes and from the tax on the incomes earned by the people of Timisoara”.

“With this decision, I saw a government either unconscious, or incompetent, or irresponsible, or all three. A government that thinks it is fooling the population with a miraculous solution that would cover the 20 billion hole in the state budget, but all it does is throw local budgets into chaos,” Fritz added.

The executive approved, on Friday, the emergency ordinance that reduces budget expenses.

“We have adopted a series of measures in order to consider the public money. Compared to the form we had in decision-making transparency, some changes have appeared. In short – the establishment of monthly expenditure limits by the Government and the derogation from these limits only through a Memorandum approved also by the Government, the 10% reduction of expenditure on goods and services, with the exception of expenditure in the field of health and education, the prohibition of acquisition, leasing or renting cars, office furniture and equipment, by public authorities and institutions”, said Adrian Câciu, Minister of Finance.