Bolsonaro pledged to support PEC that vetoes new spending to municipalities, says confederation

The representative of the CNM (National Confederation of Municipalities) Paulo Zukowski said this Tuesday (5) that President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) has committed to supporting the approval of the PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) that prohibits the Union from creating new expenses to municipalities without indication of the source of revenue.

After a meeting with the chief executive, Zukowski said that “this was determined” by Bolsonaro and that everything is “practically settled”. City halls claim they can lose up to R$250.6 billion a year as a result of decisions taken in Brasília.

“They want to delete maybe a paragraph there, as long as it doesn’t go back to the Senate and then it would stanch this bloodletting that is being created as a new expense for us. of the CNM.

Zukowski said it is inappropriate for Congress or the federal government to institute salary floors, as the responsibility for paying these employees in many cases lies with municipalities.

“We have 158 projects in progress for the creation of floors. The one for the teaching profession, the community health agents, this morning they were discussing the floor for pharmacists in the Chamber and, in the Senate, for street sweepers,” he said.

The PEC in question has already been approved by the Senate, but it still lacks the approval of the plenary of the Chamber.

The president of the entity that represents the mayors said that the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, is against the PEC because he wanted it to also cover federal expenses.

“I know that there was a preliminary meeting with the Minister of Economy himself, who is resisting because he wants him to create for the Union as well, but there is no way to change the text anymore”, he said.

He suggested that the federal government should support a proposal that discussed only the federal issue and that he would be in favor of the idea.

“The government should make a proposal for them, if they want to protect themselves. And we would even support them too, because I think there is no longer any way to work in a country that does not have the minimum budgetary security”, he declared.

Zukowski also stated that Bolsonaro opposed the idea of ​​vetoing salary floors created by the Legislature. “He was very clear — and I wouldn’t even say that I’m condemning him or not. ‘Imagine, if I veto it, politically I’m dead,’ was the expression he used,” he reported.

For the estimated loss of up to BRL 250.6 billion per year due to decisions taken in Brasília, the CNM considered both measures that reduce municipal collections (for example, reducing taxes) and those that increase their expenses (such as those that increase salary floors for certain categories). Proposals already approved by Congress were also taken into account, up to the projection of the impact of measures still pending in the Chamber or Senate.

This study was delivered to Bolsonaro this Tuesday. Among the guidelines that increase municipal expenses are the bill that expands the floor for the nursing category, the readjustment of salaries of the Judiciary and the mandatory provision of day care centers for children under 5 years of age.

On the other hand, the articles that reduce the collection are those that touch, above all, the ICMS – a topic widely debated and one of the agendas of the Bolsonaro government to try to contain inflation, a topic that has negatively affected his reelection campaign.

In this sense, according to the confederation’s study, “the main agenda of the CNM in Congress continues to be the approval of PEC 122/2015, which prohibits the Union from creating financial burdens for subnational entities without the forecast of transfer to their funding”.

This is the second time in a few months that the CNM has mobilized mayors from all over the country to come to Brasília. Before, in April, the majority agenda was focused on avoiding the increase in the salary floor for nursing, a topic that is currently still under debate in Congress.