The occasion was too good. After the announcement, Monday, November 7, by Anne Hidalgo, of the sharp increase (+52% approximately) in the property tax in Paris, her political opponents pulled out the knives. And that’s what Gabriel Attal, the Minister of Public Accounts, despite being a former PS cardholder, did. In an intervention in the Senate on Wednesday, November 16, he launched a violent charge against the municipality and its budgetary management. “The reality is that Madame Hidalgo considers that she is condemned to tax more because she refuses to spend less,” he commented.
But the various examples put forward in support of his demonstration are either misleading or misleading. Three points are problematic. We unravel them for you.
FAKE OFF
Capitalized rents are the hobbyhorse of the opposition to Anne Hidalgo. And Gabriel Attal takes it up on his own at the start of his intervention. As he is clever, nothing he says is inaccurate, but the construction of his sentence tends to mislead the listener. Here is what he says:
The city of Paris benefited from an arrangement with public accounting negotiated at the time with François Hollande called the capitalized rent system. […] This means that the city of Paris had obtained in 2015 the right to indebt the city by buying housing by entrusting them to social landlords so that they could transform and maintain them into social housing and by asking landlords to pay it several decades of rent to come at once to balance its operating budget.
His definition of capitalized rents is perfectly accurate. Nevertheless, the derogation obtained from the government concerns the possibility of registering the receipts in operation and not in investment. This ease of accounting entry can be useful because the operating section of a local authority must necessarily break even, without resorting to borrowing. Under no circumstances is there a need for an exemption to request capitalized rents from social landlords. Moreover, in its latest report on Parisian public finances, the Regional Chamber of Accounts notes that “this system is adapted to the development of social housing”.
And where Gabriel Attal is mischievous is when he adds at the very end of his sentence “to balance its operating budget”. What he asserts is therefore not false even if, upon listening, the listener is persuaded that the derogation concerns the possibility of having recourse to capitalized rents and not the simple possibility of registering it in operation.
He continues by adding that he “decided to put an end to this system which is a real time bomb for Parisians”. Here again, he plays with words because according to Paul Simondon, finance assistant in Paris, “we built our 2023 budget without derogation”. So, contrary to what the local elected official asserts, Gabriel Attal is not “lying” since at no time does he say that he refused an exemption, but he did not put an end to the system either since he didn’t have to deal with it. However, his cabinet did not respond to us on a possible derogation requested for 2023.
The Minister of Action and Public Accounts continues with state aid.
The reality is that the State is alongside the city of Paris, that there have been exceptional tax receipts this year, an exceptional payment of 50 million euros in VAT receipts, a few weeks that the city of Paris is moreover eligible for the safety net […]it can benefit from a deposit of 15 million euros.
Obviously, in absolute terms, these are huge figures, but they deserve to be put into perspective, which Gabriel Attal obviously fails to do. Here is what the CRC writes in the aforementioned report: “In total, the cumulative effect of the reduction in the overall operating grant (610 million euros), the strengthening of equalization (384 million euros) and the shortfall on the evolution of the CVAE (190 million euros) represented for the City a loss of revenue of 1.184 billion euros in 2020.” Each loss of revenue was decided by the government. The 65 million euros therefore seem very derisory compared to the 1.2 billion euros in less than 2020.
Finally, regarding the transition to thirty-five hours, Gabriel Attal suggests the following as a way of saving money for the City of Paris:
Really apply the 35 hours for the civil servants of the city of Paris, the city was condemned to apply the 35 hours, it finds all the means to circumvent the legal obligation of the 35 hours.
Certainly the Paris City Hall was condemned by the administrative judge on the subject but its last regulation of working time was validated on November 2 by the prefecture of Ile-de-France, the same which had attacked the previous regulation. Thus “the working time regulations for City of Paris staff now seem to me to be able to be interpreted in a way that complies with the legal and regulatory provisions to which they are subject”, writes the prefect Marc Guillaume in a letter which AFP has got copy. In this case, it is difficult to reproach the City of Paris for not applying the law. Or else, you have to know what is hidden behind the “really”.
As a bonus, the minister offers himself a final accusation on subsidies to associations.
Stop with an explosion of discretionary spending subsidizing sometimes starving associations.
Gabriel Attal takes up here a classic of the municipal opposition to Anne Hidalgo who already lamented in September 2020 “ever more obscurity in the attributions, with the now regular grouping of subsidies, grouped and “to vote by package”, agglomeration of dozens of associations, some known, of undeniable public utility and others, much less “. However, it is difficult to know whether these accusations are justified or not, given the number of subsidies, which may however raise questions.