The Logroño City Council, in a plenary session, has rejected a motion presented by the non-affiliated councilor Eva Loza for the reduction of Group allocations with the votes of all Municipal Groups -PR+, Podemos-IU, Vox, PSOE, and PP-. The motion was amended by PR+, although it was not accepted by the proponent.
Loza, in defense of her proposal, indicated that «public servants must be exemplary, and we are not when we approve a budget with a net negative savings of eight million euros, which entails approving a municipal management plan that we all know is nothing more than a plan of cuts.»
She stated that «while services are being cut for citizens and they have to tighten their belts, it doesn’t seem very normal for the allocation to municipal groups to remain intact.» Therefore, «I not only propose what the auditor logically asks for, which is to return that part of the credit that has not been spent, but I go further and, based on the percentage of unspent funds, some municipal groups have made a proposal for proportional reduction, reducing it by 25 percent for the Popular Party, 20 percent for the Socialist Municipal Group, 15 percent for the Vox Municipal Group, and 10 percent for the Mixed Group.»
The non-affiliated councilor has requested that the auditor «carry out the prior and final verification of these municipal allocations, to ensure absolute transparency.»
Additionally, she has demanded that for non-affiliated councilors, they «should not have more privileges than they had, but they should not have any punishment and should have the minimum conditions to carry out their work.»
For this reason, she has requested «something provided for in Article 20 of the Plenary Regulations, which is half of the variable, that is, 5,500 euros annually, to be able to allocate that money, like the rest of the municipal groups have their municipal allocations to request any material or information that I need to carry out my work.»
OPPOSING GROUPS
Next, the different Municipal Groups who rejected supporting Loza’s proposal spoke. The PR+ spokesperson, Rubén Antoñanzas, recalled that «her first intervention – referring to Loza, was to defend not having her salary from the Socialist Party taken away; and now she brings us a motion in which she wants to sell it as being for the citizens, but today, by being in the plenary, partially, she will earn 800 euros.»
He indicated that «she has the allocation that all councilors have, and in that sense, no right of hers has been violated.»
The spokesperson for the Podemos-IU Mixed Group, Amaia Castro, told Loza that with the proposal «what she is asking is to lower the allocation so that more money is given to her.» «Perhaps what she forgets to mention is that she has almost 13,000 euros a year for all those tasks she says she can’t do and that’s why she needs more money; before, in all the interviews she gave, she said she didn’t need more money, and now she says she needs more money,» criticizing, to conclude, that «she is using this plenary session for personal matters against her former party.»
For Vox, their spokesperson María Jiménez, indicated that «of course, we share in essence the need to promote an austere and efficient, and above all, transparent management of public resources,» but «we cannot ignore the notable inconsistencies between the content of this motion and the public statements that you -Loza- have made and have been making in the media, where you said you were not going to request any compensation or allocation.»
«Now, she has continued, through this motion, she proposes to be the dog in the manger, that the groups receive less and the only non-affiliated councilor receives more. Literally, she requests an economic allocation for the non-affiliated, which is just her,» she concluded.
The spokesperson for the PSOE Municipal Group, Luis Alonso, indicated that Loza’s proposal «is a crude request for the transfer of money from the rest of the groups to her bank account,» something he described as «amazing.»
«Her first motion revolves around requesting a paycheck,» he asserted, while noting that «I have missed some scenes of this theater of the absurd in which you have been immersed since April 1, because as soon as you left the municipal group, you boasted on your social networks of not charging anything, of not receiving anything from the city council, of not costing money to public coffers,» however, «shortly after, in an unexpected twist, acting against what you yourself preached, that zero cost for the City Council turns into hindering in every possible way the execution and voting of the withdrawal of your release.»
The Governance councilor, Celia Sanz, referred to the motion presented by the non-affiliated councilor as a «jumble» «in which she mixes technical aspects, legal aspects, and, let’s say, almost moral aspects.»
She expressed her «disappointment» because «she has taken advantage of a motion to talk about what are supposedly the payments to the groups to request, as I said, that mechanism that guarantees her allocation,» something that «is inconsistent with her statements,» Sanz concluded.
