La Laguna already has its final budget for this year, after the Plenary approved yesterday in an extraordinary and urgent session, with only the votes in favor of the government group (PSOE, Unidas se puede and Avante), the file for non-admission of the claims presented by the group of Coalition Canaria (CC) during the period of allegations and the final approval of the accounts, which the Plenary debated and approved on February 20.
The file had the abstention of the PP and the vote against of CC and the non-attached councilor Alfredo Gómez, who began the session questioning the urgency of it for this matter, maintaining the spokesman for the nationalists, Jonathan Domínguez, that “the call, as it has been done, has overtones of illegality.
The mayor of the municipality, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, defended that “the approval of this budget is extremely important. The local administration is paralyzed because we have not approved it”. The spokesman for the socialist group, Badel Albelo, added that the urgency was motivated “by the need to comply with budgetary regulations” and to “approve these budgets that make it possible for the administration to continue working.” “CC’s only motivation is to have the administration paralyzed,” he denounced.
During the debate on the file, the CC spokesman defended the six allegations presented by his group to “improve the investment plan, adjust it to reality and distribute them throughout all the neighborhoods and towns, and not make one that they know is unfeasible because it does not there are staff to manage it”. He criticized projects like the flood park “where currently the PGO does not allow it.” He also denounced that “in chapter 1 they have not put enough items to improve the staff.” “We could have done this as amendments if we had been able to see the budget in time,” he defended.
Domínguez blamed the local government for the delay in approving the budget and criticized the rush now “to grant nominative subsidies before the elections, which are a record in this budget.”
The socialist spokesman responded that, based on the reports of the Intervention, the legal advisory and the Treasury area, “the aforementioned allegations do not deal with the reasons for the claim to the budget”, based on article 170.2 of the law regulating local haciendas, “and that is why the Intervention proceeds to inadmit them.”
Regarding CC’s allegation, in which he argues “the apparent lack of legitimization of the director of the Presidency to be able to sign the report in chapter 1”, Albelo replied that “the report is clear and the alleged nullity of the appointment emanates from a mere opinion of the Secretary of the Plenary”. To which he added that, in addition, “the director’s proposal is simply technical on information from chapter 1 and does not have the character of a resolution.” Therefore, that claim was also dismissed. Domínguez indicated that he was not going to enter into this issue “because he is under judicial review.” “With the reports from the officials, there is no reason to continue paralyzing the administration, which I believe is CC’s only objective,” Albelo emphasized.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for United We Can, Rubens Ascanio, responded to CC that “the truth is that you had no amendments to present. Now we have an unconnected story that the only thing it hides is that you don’t want to have a budget in 2023”. He defended that “this government is the first to manage an ordinance for competitive competition.”
Likewise, the Avante spokesman, Santiago Pérez, recalled “the 60 million hidden debt that the City Council had” in 2011, and defended the recovery of the old lagoon and that the Canarian Government “has expressed its willingness to approve it as a project of interest regional, which will imply the modification of the PGO”.
