A CITY No 135 / January 2006 PIER PAOLO FANES
ASSEMBLY DISTRICT
Participatory budgeting is not only a general referendum, but fielded a number of defined procedures for the public to participate in decisions. The experience of Groton, where the budget was passed with a problem far more complex as the development plan. The force that gives public participation also to cope with the speculative interests. Speech by Pier Paolo Fanesi.
Pier Paolo Fanesi is head of the Democracy Participatory City of Groton (AP). We publish his speech at the conference "The mutualism today", organized last January in Forli Alfred Lewin Foundation and a city.
For the past ten years working at the Groton Town Hall, dell'Ascolano small town, where I deal with instances and participatory procedures, first of participatory budgeting.
Groton is a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants, located in the South of the Marches, and was one of the first Italian municipalities to launch an experiment in participatory budgeting, participatory democracy. So that is often compared to Porto Alegre.
course administrators are the first to distance themselves from this type By comparison, it is true that we refer in part to that experience, which we have been positively affected, but the social realities and dimensions with which we face are different. In Porto Alegre there is a problem of slums, social problems radicals, Groton to the participatory process has taken hold on a socio-economic well-being, based primarily on tourism. For some years we get four "sails" and this year we received the highest score of the entire coast of the Marches.
The history of participatory budgeting
Participatory budgeting is a project in South America, in Porto Alegre, in the late '80s, with the victory of the Workers' Party, which came to power launches the bet part of the government. The challenge was to decide with people, to transfer the decision-making institutions to citizenship. A process began slowly, but over the years has earned the trust and legitimacy general, so much so that the right emerged victorious in the last election, did just that location and is continuing. In that experiment
Italy has risen to prominence largely due to social forum, just as Europe and held in Porto Alegre, where scholars and administrators met Italians, some deciding to adopt the same approach.
It 'difficult to determine what and what is not a participatory budget. More than an accounting document, a regulation, the article by a municipal charter, I like to call it a path of faces, people, opportunities, victories and defeats, as well as unexpected results. It is not possible to define a clear line when you can (and when they can not) talk about participatory budgeting. Just to get the particulars have been drawn up some parameters. I'm so out five key points that allow us to distinguish a real participatory budgeting experience from other.
When we talk about participatory budgeting? When we have a financial dimension. That is, we talk about participatory budgeting when we talk about resources, not just projects.
Secondly, participatory budgeting can not stop to wait for "neighborhood", it must assume a model of local development: you get people to just decide on a development paradigm of the local community and the community. It is not enough to decide on small things. Although it remains a positive-sum game, meaning that it's good enough a citizen participation, where sometimes you decide you very much, we talk about participatory budgeting when there is actually a co-decision process in terms of development models, scenarios shared.
There must also the presence of a cyclical nature in the sense that participatory budgeting can not remain isolated within an assembly, for a moment. Participation must include a path, not just a stage, otherwise the risk is to play a "selective" by the institutions: the people I call the meeting, questioned them on a precise issue, the idea to me more appropriate, the realizable, then it ends there. This is participatory budgeting.
Participatory budgeting also needs to have a few moments deliberation: a journey of this kind involves a transfer of power. Participation must go to an erosion of traditional mechanisms, must enter the "decision box" in one way or another. Finally there must be
Clear rules and at the same time changeable. Participation should be able to nurture participation, and the modalities of participation are also subject to the same process. All this to say also that participatory budgeting is not a kit to be exported from one municipality to another. A Groton
participatory budgeting was introduced in the early '90s, more precisely in 1994. At the international level, globalization has already begun to show his face less clean, with all the contradictions and paradoxes that is called into question. And 'now clear that major decisions are made at the supranational level, in arenas far from the city, to increasingly more oriented economic scenarios, not politicians. Bodies like the IMF, the World Bank, Europe itself, at best, suffering from a legitimacy deficit. At national level the situation is not rosy: Mario Chiesa was arrested in 1992 and from there comes out the system of corruption reported that he then passed Tangentopoli.
Groton is a politico-administrative history far from original, forty years of Christian Democrat government, no operation of decentralization or participation. In 1993 he won the elections and goes to the center for domestic problems, however, fails to carry out the mandate. This brings us to the commissioner of administration. In these
same year the city comes to life a movement called "Solidarity and Participation". This list is presented to the 1994 elections to allied forces, the center-left and wins beating the traditional parties. That's a bit 'year zero of the mechanisms of participation that I will now tell.
The new junta, made up of young people from civil society, exiled by the parties, are facing a big problem as that of having to administer a community begins to summon the people just in order to take stock: what do we have to put, such instances must bring in the accounting records, etc.. Thus forming the neighborhood committees and slowly, in a completely unconscious, you go to create a model of participatory budgeting, which today is quite structured and that the purpose of delegating important decisions to citizenship.
Assemblies and committees, proposals emerged as informal, spontaneous, newly elected by the junta, over time have been consolidated and are now the two columns around which, to date, we structure the path of participatory budgeting and participatory democracy in general. The technical aspects
The technical aspect of these processes is often left in the shadows. I think it is not appropriate to say a few words to tell the tale.
Meanwhile, it must be said that the neighborhood assemblies are also the product of a territorial division came out taking into account the morphology of the territory: there are four districts and four committees were born, where meetings were held before and after the budget.
From 1994 to 2003 the process of participatory budgeting has worked primarily with the following method: a first round meeting with a propositional value, in which the emergence of things and then followed the preparation of financial statements with additional meetings that were going to check what was included and what is not by the junta. In fact, the neighborhood committees were acting in parallel, meaning that if the meetings were a collective dimension, which is fundamental to participation in neighborhood committees gave a guarantee of continuity.
participation in the collective dimension is key to the battle to become the single common project. Moreover, the participatory budget was created to meet a need before the administration and citizens.
In 2003 a restructuring took place in the articulation of this process. First of all districts increased from four to seven. This is for a simple reason: to have meetings of a more manageable size. Obviously this has made life more difficult, because the neighborhood assemblies for administrators are anything but relaxing: it is the moment when the problem becomes the problem of the individual of all. The idea of \u200b\u200bhaving more meetings, but with small numerical size, was also born to help all those people (the elderly, immigrants, illiterate) that would have been hard to speak in the most crowded areas. We wanted to avoid that action were always and only president of the association or committee in office, or the party secretary. So
seven meetings, from which emerge all the requirements of citizenship, to create a real list. Then you make a technical panel, they are separated out all those for lack of jurisdiction requests that the City can not accept. Following is the table of the participation of neighborhoods, which is a meeting between the and the junta spokesman for the assemblies of the districts. E 'are brought to the table where all the citizens.
These proposals, all recorded, should be established by municipal offices and divided into three categories: recommendations and proposals of interest to the district, proposed to take over the town.
Reports, relating to minor issues (security, waste collection, signage, minor maintenance etc..) And so in general there is little to decide, are forwarded directly to the offices responsible for their solution.
Proposals for district operations and the importance of the town, supplemented by other administrators received through other means (letters, e-mail, direct meetings in Town Hall), are reported in neighborhood assemblies, in a second round of meetings in which individual citizens can express, even in the light of feasibility and cost, their votes to indicate the order of priority. The result is a list of actions to be implemented, that the Town Council agrees to comply strictly.
preferences emerged about the overall priorities of importance town, also submitted to a vote on a special card, but make up a grid verification program of the Municipal office.
So, summing up the first round of meetings, general list of requests, a table of the participation of neighborhoods, three categories of requests, the second round of neighborhood assemblies in which citizens are informed and vote. This year we
to 70% compared to the implementation of interventions is both of those citizens of the district. Proportions are important.
How do assemblies? In those of the first cycle there is a mayor who says what has emerged and it was (or was not) made in participatory budgeting in the previous year, and why. Discusses and contextualizes the budget. Why blows of financial resources are experiencing major cuts. Then take the word to the people and expose the problems. In
second round of meetings the problem is similar: it speaks of the interventions of the neighborhood and citizens as you are going to vote. So I'm more focused and aimed at the vote, the culmination of the meeting.
This is a bit 'structure. From research that I conducted on participatory budgeting in Groton have rebuilt a path made of 124 decision-making played in the ten years of experimentation. This is to give the idea of \u200b\u200bthe complexity inherent in these scenarios.
The limits of participatory budgeting
Participatory budgeting is not all roses, as it may seem on paper. The neighborhood assemblies are always to be built. I remember at the beginning neighborhood meeting with two people. Other 850 people and participated in case they became too unmanageable. It 's a process that alternates between opportunity and deadlock. We must also do more to deal with issues "exogenous" because common today are faced with a transfer of skills and a cut in resources at the same time!
This is a huge problem because if there is little provision is likely to die holding together the budget. Participatory budgeting in fact occurs only on the distribution of resources. Hence a first consideration, but if this mechanism works because not extend it to other areas?
In 1997 he was touching the floor general rule. At meetings of the participatory budget has quickly emerged into the need to intervene in these mechanisms.
That is how dozens of meetings and issues an open office plan every day, with the presence of some facilitators explained that this document represented what the public apparently so difficult, with drawings of squares, streets, etc.., And I outlined the major points, the strategic choices that were being made.
A path that reached by the plan and involved hundreds of people. E 'fell so the argument according to which citizens can not intervene in the plan as too complicated.
Well, that plan, blocked by twenty-five years hostage because of political and economic interests, when subjected to a popular law so strong, was changed within a year and a half, two years, managing to cut one million cubic meters of building area, bringing the land to agricultural land. The designer
officer told me that ever happened to him to see the reduced volume of building rights. Not only was foiled the well-known risk that private interests to prevail, but it was also dispelled one of the clichés that prolongs the time of the participation processes. In this case, they have shortened. Another instrument
on which we have experienced participation is what we call "the meeting of Wednesday." A weekly basis when the movement meets Autoconvocate to which all citizens can participate. It 's a very special moment, sometimes attended, sometimes not. Here you do not vote, you proceed to deliberations. There are no interests to defend, there is no negotiation, there is a table where I give something in exchange for something else. It 's a bit of the executive meeting in which citizens, everyone can act.
Another moment in which participation was important was the agreement of the program, a tool that does a little 'hair stand on end, in the sense that you go to affect any plans, because in the end the audience is to contract with the private sector. A very delicate situation because the private, having to do with a collective interest, usually raises the price.
Well, at Groton, in the participatory budget was voted the redevelopment of an area. Here, too, has sought to proceed in an inclusive manner, in the sense that the meetings were held before the Mayor met the private sector. Citizenship has thus created a mandate of five points, to which the mayor must follow, such as "lodging-houses in the area we want for the elderly, green area, parking, etc... " So the mayor, the highlight of the day negotiating with the private, arrived with his back covered: he had a mandate to be followed: "I can not depart from these five points." The private
initially did not sign, but the mayor has remained firm: "I can not and will not depart from the mandate. I could not go back to those people, "and has not really done anything. It is called the City Council, but an hour before the individual has signed the framework agreement. She tried to rise, but it went wrong. We are now trying to move the participation in the planning of individual interventions, the rehabilitation of one square, the renovation of a church, etc.. Here, too, have been held some meetings with citizens and designer. The priest, who knew of this intention to hold a public meeting, the church has even offered. Eccentric assembly, a significant moment.
Participation and Social Inclusion
In the past ten years, following the step by step the demands of citizens, had noted an apparent anomaly especially in the initial stage, most came mainly from two areas (Ischia Ischia and II), which almost monopolized the attention of the administration at the expense of other neighborhoods. Not being a sociological analysis of the place I started.
Talking with people, with the mayor of the time, I discovered that there were two areas heavily degraded, with a deficit of belonging, victims of a land-use planning is absolutely senseless, the landing point of internal and external migration, which had led to wild urbanization without points of social interaction, green areas. Real dormitory suburbs.
no coincidence that the first meetings were literally besieged by the inhabitants of these districts asking for more attention to the administration and works to support the weaker sections of society. Here, the participation was just a school of citizenship, very active with neighborhood committees, which can be in The active process, although it is a path fraught with difficulties. All this has put in place the dynamics of social inclusion very strong, with a view to redistribution of resources from the center that hit the suburbs. So much so that today these areas have solved many of their problems. Unfortunately, with the improvement of the quality, participation, alas, has fallen.
So this is another area where it might be worth questioning. Participation is a process that promotes social inclusion because it promotes the redistribution of resources. How to ensure that the success of this process coincides with a withdrawal of participation?
type of requests
I talked about cuts, but I would not be misunderstood, legitimizing arguments do not agree. Faced with a series of objections that I often did the mayors and councilors who in recent years I have met - "I can not do participatory budgeting. I would love to but I can not decide because people do not have the money "- I must say that from my survey indicated that 70% of the citizens' demands are low to medium cost.
There is another important fact: the participation and its instances in the past ten years has been transformed. If before the claims were related mainly to urban planning, road conditions, street furniture, over time there was a sort of "learning social citizenship that led to direct their requests to the field of culture, social services, integration policies. It 'just changed the nature of the requests.
Another question I have asked is what participatory budgeting truly affect people's lives, how many requests have arisen during the meetings have seen the construction? Here the percentage is 90%. This means that it is an important path for the base to the summit, if I may say, in the sense that it was handed out during an election year sweeteners.
Representative democracy and participatory democracy
far I have talked about participatory budgeting meaning the presence of elements of direct democracy in a representative tissue. I make this statement to say that participatory budgeting aims to promote the practice of grassroots democracy, but no substitute for representative democracy. It is therefore not really an institution of direct democracy, but a mix of representative democracy and democracy "participatory".
This should lead to some greater proximity between the choices made by the administration and the desires of the citizens, the other a greater possibility of the weak sectors of society to represent their interests. We say that is a kind of lubricant used to facilitate and right (meaning closer to the needs of the community), the traditional process.
also important is the fact that the emergence of the problem brings his assumption of the political agenda. So many times not to decide is already an exercise of power, is already a decision. This participatory budgeting does not allow it: the citizens' assemblies, the immigrant, the housewife, the retired, the precarious, all citizens not affiliated with a party, are entitled to advance claims, to raise questions to which the politician can not escape . It is no longer decide what is a political problem and what is not. Participation also structure some alternatives to the problem, but without intervening in a concrete way (this area is for technical personnel).
The final risk that I would like to mention is that in the face of many small governments that are making major routes, we must also say that in some reality behind the formulation of participatory budgeting is hiding nothing. Again, participatory budgeting is not a small meeting convened prior to the approval of a budget that had a path away from citizens who do not have the opportunity to make a real difference.
I would like to make one last note. The administration often found themselves dealing with issues that do not necessarily have to do with the budget. Here was the problem of the "high country". The town of Groton has two large clusters: the shore, also known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, and the high country. The latter is located approximately 170 meters above sea level and is accessed through the steep streets from which you can enjoy a magnificent view of the sea. Well
the high country, a beautiful center, had a huge problem of traffic that created severe hardships. Here, too, have been held meetings with all the families (120 people live there and the small size helped) that led to the citizenship of the country decide to close the bar high with a remote. But the interesting thing was that the same nationality, for the first time, it offered to pay for part of the costs of the intervention.
This is a passage that made us think: if this decision had come from above, with an order, I can not imagine the result in terms of social conflict ...
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