Parliament, subsidies for elected officials remain unaffordable. From rebates to daily allowance, the “opaque” accessories. “Now more transparency with the reform of the regulations”

70% of voters have just celebrated the cut in parliamentarians for a savings of about 80 million euro per year. Exactly how much money you will save, but nobody knows, because the reporting system of indemnities and reimbursements dispensed to the elect is vague, opaque and with shaded areas as if to allow even small tricks and calculations of convenience, defying the mantra of total transparency. It is due to parliamentary regulations that always leave that margin of uncertainty, of accident rate that concretely translates into unknowableness of the data. The website of OpenPolis which invites both chambers to also include this element in the revision of the regulations that will be modified precisely as a result of the referendum on the cut of seats.

MPs are one abnormal category of citizens also because of this: wage earners with public money, but without advertising their salary. Of course, there is an income tax return, but it also includes income from professional activities and annuities. Sure, we know the calculation method and the numbers at stake, but only thanks to the two crossover pages on expected salary available on the House and Senate website. It is known, for example, that total expenditure amounts to 224 million. But if a citizen wanted to know how much a deputy or senator was actually paid, they could not do so, unless they called the person in question directly.

In fact, there is no precise summary of each variable component of remuneration which, in the case of elected officials, is almost half of what they receive: that is, thetolerance real that function, the daily by living expenses a gypsy, I refunds for political activity in the area and other expenses (from transportation to the telephone). Here, there is no advertisement on these items and related quantities and therefore no transparency. Well clarify immediately that the privacy has nothing to do with it. The Guarantor himself did so by also intervening in the recent Fight of the winners Covid voucher of 600 euros, reiterating that the expectations of personal data protection are, in any case, weakened for those in public functions. But what cannot be known?

Every year the classification of the absent. But it is unknown if it cost him to escape and how much it cost him to escape, except for the general rule: in the Chamber, recalls OpenPolis, the per diem traveling in 3,500 euros is cut from 206.58 euros for each day of absence. To which you can add up to 500 euros per month in case of absence in commissions and town halls. Similar cuts are also expected in the Senate, albeit to a degree not specified on the site. However, this sanction applies only in case of non-participation in at least the 30% of the votes in the classroom. If not, there isn’t. Since the best connoisseurs of the subject are the perceivers themselves, many simply stop at the threshold, before the red, to leave without Without restrictions. And so get the green disk for the full payment.

Not only. Ladies who want to disappear have the power to duplicate. absent from the Chambers, appearing as if they were present. It’s enough mark mission. The Fact raised the issue three years ago, sparking a lot of controversy and angry responses from stakeholders caught on the point. In fact, the regulation allows elected representatives to appear as “justified absentee” if – with a simple fax to the Presidency – they communicate that they have commitments. linked to his mandate.

Whoever declares the mission receives the entire daily allowance, in addition to the salary and relative contributions, without any reduction. The Assembly Service is limited to recording the event passively, without any verification. The deputies or senators are not obliged in any way to motivate and justify the absence of the supposed “functions”. And verification, without that information, can be done only empirically and in hindsight, that is, go see what the chosen one was doing that day, where he was and so on. It was then that the strange missions of a Renato Brunetta on TV, Michela Vittoria Brambilla who opened supermarkets or Valentina vezzali who trained in the gym and was present in the Chamber as a “mission”. A kind of ongoing abuse to the detriment of taxpayers. Where is the problem? Many women, it is fair to say, are going nowhere. They just hide in their offices and go to find out what.

Since then everything has remained the same and to empty Parliament, before the reform that is coming, still today it continues to provide an army of deputies on permanent leave who escape from the classroom and from commission work to do their own business or that of the party , nevertheless taking care that they are paid as if they were there. In this legislature, OpenPolis, in 105 deputies and 27 senators were absent or on mission a vote of 2 in the classroom; and 38 deputies absent or on mission in more than 70% of the cases. The list of those who mark the mission is always read by the president at the end of the vote and is published in the annex to the session. But reason and the time.

Other auxiliary elements also have large gray areas. See the famous “expenses ofexercise of the mandate“That is worth 3,690 euros to the Chamber but only half have to be documented. And the others? In Europe and in some parliaments of the Union, money for collaborators is not delivered directly to the payroll, in the form of reimbursement, but is extracted from a specific item of the budget capped at 25 thousand euros and broken. Just to avoid situations of abuse to damage of parliamentary collaborators, a common vice on the right and left, and to avoid the perpetuation of that gray area that has always been the condemnation for them and a way of cornering the elected representatives. Here OpenPolis is now back in the office with this request: since it depends on the regulations to be handled again, let’s straighten out its old distortions by giving a real sense to the word transparency.