Rachida Dati, leader of the opposition LR at the mayor of Paris, denounced Tuesday in the city council the “insincerity” of the 2022 draft budget. “What seems to characterize the DOB [débat d’orientation budgétaire] 2022, it is his insincerity “, assailed the mayor of the 7th arrondissement, estimating” at more than 400 million euros “a” shortfall “for the City which” puts on the operating budget a real risk of imbalance, prohibited by law ”.
“If this were the case”, putting the City “under the financial supervision of the State would no longer be an option but an obligation”, added Rachida Dati, who wrote to this effect to the regional prefect Marc Guillaume, to the minister. of Economy Bruno Le Maire and that of relations with local authorities Jacqueline Gourault, denouncing “the drift in the finances of the Parisian community”. Pointing to a debt which “jumped 95% between 2013 and the end of 2021, from 3.6 […] to 7.1 billion euros ”, the elected LR also asks Bercy to“ suspend any new derogatory authorization in terms of capitalized rents ”, an operation consisting for the City of asking its social landlords for all the rents due on several decades.
A “maneuver bordering on legality”
In its budget orientation report for 2022, the City has planned a new operation of social housing agreement which would bring it about 500 million euros, “the last of this magnitude” before these revenues fall back to an average of around 40 million per year “from 2025”. But for Rachida Dati, “this maneuver is at the limit of legality” and “carries the risk of financing operating expenses by borrowing by circumventing the golden rule of local public finances”.
Based on the “principle of an advance receipt rather than annual receipts”, the use of capitalized rents “has been authorized six times in a row by successive governments”, replied Finance Assistant Paul Simondon (PS ) for whom this operation “does not cost the State one euro” and allows the City to invest “in public spaces” around social housing. “There is no weakening of the donors”, added Paul Simondon, taking the example of Paris Habitat which “increased by 20% its effort on the works”.