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Former finance adviser Eirik Lae Solberg (H) is highly critical of the fact that Oslo’s red-green city council will use money from the municipality’s pension fund to finance the crown’s measures.
Eirik Lae Solberg (H) believes that it is irresponsible for the red-green city of Oslo to use the municipality’s pension fund to pay for the crown measures. Photo: Olav Olsen
In an interview with Councilor Raymond Johansen (Labor Party) and Finance Councilor Einar Wilhelmsen (MDG) in Aftenposten, it was revealed that the City Council will take money from the fund that will cover future pension expenses. This can happen if the government does not fully compensate the spending of the Oslo crown.
Johansen’s starting point was that Oslo has a third of all infection cases in the country, but has so far received only 13 percent of the marijuana from the authorities that will cover municipalities’ crown expenses.
In the revised city council budget, the city council took 300 million from the pension fund to cover the crown measures.
Eirik Lae Solberg sees that he is surprised that the city council spends 500 million to fulfill its own electoral promises.
– Raymond Johansen continues to spend wild money in the middle of a pandemic. It’s absolutely amazing, says Eirik Lae Solberg. He is deputy director of the Oslo Conservatives.
– The town hall is bragging
Solberg points to Wilhelmsen’s remarks to Aftenposten that Oslo can take money from the fund that will cover future pension expenses if the government doesn’t listen. You think it’s a hoax.
– They are already supplied approximately with the pension fund. It happens completely independent of crown measurements. Even if the government gave Oslo 100 percent compensation for the crown’s measures, the city council has proposed in the proposed budget that the fund be 400 million lower than planned.
– Responsible politicians do not loot the pension fund to finance their own political initiatives.
– Low goal by Solberg
Raymond Johansen will not answer himself, but he allows Finance Counsel Einar Wilhelmsen (MDG) to comment on Solberg’s claims:
– Solberg chooses to speak to Oslo. It is a pity. Oslo’s economy is very strong. Since Solberg resigned as financial advisor, we have lowered our debt ratio. We have completed the much needed Oslo update.
– And Oslo receives the highest credit rating from Standard & Poor’s. Among European capitals, only Stockholm achieves something similar. This testifies to sound financial management.
He says that conservatives have repeatedly wanted to intervene Less money in the background as the council parties have done.
He believes it is a low goal for Solberg to say that the city council is looting the pension fund.
– Conservatives have consistently proposed cuts to employee pensions. Under our town hall, the employee pension money is safe with Oslo Pensjonsforsikring.
Solberg: the city box has no bottom
Eirik Lae Solberg says the city council has not reserved “a single municipal crown” to handle the pandemic.
– Cuts in social welfare, therefore, only give rise to the electoral promises of the council itself.
He says it is an absurd experience to listen to Johansen talk about financial responsibility.
– Johansen’s mad spending of money would make Sun King Louis XIV blush.
He says that the municipality for the last five years has had a “unique increase” in revenue in higher transfers and higher tax revenues.
– However, the city coffers are bottomless.
Eirik Lae Solberg (H), Deputy Leader of the Oslo Conservatives Photo: Heiko Junge
Solberg emphasizes that the conservatives in Oslo agree that Oslo should be reimbursed more crown expenses than the population dictates.
– But we cannot count on the state to cover absolutely everything, since the city council builds its entire budget.
Break your own rule of action
Solberg says the city council is using the pandemic to hide how the city council has destroyed Oslo’s “once-strong economy” in the past five years.
It notes that Oslo for 20 years has been governed by a separate financial action rule to strengthen the municipality’s ability to resist tax revenue failures.
– Indicates that income must be 1.5 percent greater than expenses.
It says that until 2020, the rule was self-imposed.
– But in the 2020 budget, the city council repealed the action rule to avoid imposing restrictions on its own spending. Now the city council proposes that the rule of action be reintroduced by 2021. But it happens because the city council suddenly discovered that from 2020 it is a legal requirement to have such a rule.
– However, the city council plans to break the local action rule, so it sings every year from 2021 to 2024.
– It was fine with a little traction.
Einar Wilhelmsen is upset by the criticism:
– Yes, we implement the policy for which we were elected. At the same time, we brought Oslo to safety through the pandemic. We work to reduce infection. And at the same time, we have had to push for our promises to be stepped up.
Councilor Raymond Johansen (right) and Councilor for Finance Einar Wilhelmsen. Photo: Vidar Ruud
It says that Oslo needs several hundred million in compensation from the state in 2020 to be fully compensated.
Wilhelmsen also says he would have been “fine with a little help” from Solberg “instead of this political game.”
– I think it is dramatic if conservative Eirik Lae Solberg now cancels the government’s promise that municipalities will receive full compensation. Do you think we shouldn’t trust Local Government Minister Nikolai Astrup? He asks.
