Reign in the local authorities

Municipality of Cascais
"Proud" owner of 11 public companies

Yesterday I suggested diminishing the number of municipalities to 40 and closing down every single "freguesia" in:

Close to 5000 local authorities in Portugal?

I continue to think so.  But I forgot to mention that it would be the ideal moment to close down every single municipal company.  There are a very large number of them in Portugal and they cost everybody a great deal.

Just in my municipality, Cascais, we have eleven (*).  These kind of "companies" are more often than not used to get jobs for "the boys" at salaries much above the public sector.  They often loose money and need to be resupplied by the municipalities.  It is completely impossible to find out whether they are cost effective or not.  They are in effect a monopoly in their area (the municipality).  I have a postulate.  The degree of corruptness in a municipality is directly proportional to money spent on (e.g. number of) municipal companies.

In my humble opinion all the employees should be counted as public employees and their passives should be added to the public debt.  It will not be easy as nobody even knows the exact number of municipal companies in Portugal.

So shut them all down.  If a municipality is not able to handle, say garbage collection, then make a public tender for the service for two year periods.  Nobody in the municipality should be allowed to choose the winning company.

A so called white book with an analysis of the sector has been made public (hat tip "O Público).  There are at least 14000 employees and 334 of these companies.  They have a debt of at least 2.4 billion (1.5% of the GDP).  The only problem is that the real numbers are much larger.  We just don't know how large.

I am not really surprised.  After all even the state does not know its exact number of employees...

(*)  One of the companies in Cascais is called EMAC, "Empresa Municipal de Ambiente de Cascais", Municipial Company of the Environment of Cascais.  Do notice the PC name of the company.  A great way of misdirection if necessary. We call it the Municipial Company of António Capucho ("Empresa Municipal de António Capucho").  Mr. António Capucho is the former president (**) of the municipality of Cascais.  I have no idea whether the company was created by him or the former crook, president of Cascais, Judas.
What I do believe is that we loose money because of that company.
What I do know is what I have seen in the past.  I often run on the beach in Carcavelos in the morning.  Usually, I and the fantastic cleaners (***) are the first on the beach.  Quite a while ago they were redoing part of the beach walk and at a large expense building an ocean breaker to keep the sand from disappearing from the beach.
Several mornings I saw large trucks from EMAC driving away truck loads of sand from the beach.  It is illegal to take away sand from the beach and I wonder who came to benefit from all that sand...

(**) Presidents of municipalities have far too much power, just as their inflated title suggest.  A reform of the municipalities should curb this power as much as possible.  A good start of psychological value would be a new less imposing title.

(***) They are also from EMAC, I believe, and actually do a great job.  It must cost a fortune.  A lot of the public using the beach are swines and pollute.  Some civic lessons would be nice and could save money...