Table 3 - Sub-National Government Competencies
According to the 2001 constitutional reform
Responsibilities of municipalities
Responsibilities of provinces RegionsTown planning Road network maintenance Health
Social housing Transport Health centres and hospitals
Aid to disabled Secondary schools (construction of
building)Vocational trainingLocal public transport Environment including protection
and improvement of the energy
resourcesCultureRoad network maintenance Cultural heritage Town planning
Local police Household waste and sewage Road networks, civil engineering
and regional railway transport
Pre-elementary, primary and
vocational schools (building
construction and maintenance and
teachers’ pay)Some health services AgricultureCulture Vocational teaching Country planning and economic
development
Sport Economic development Environment
Sewage and waste disposal Management of employment
services and subsidiesSocial servicesUpkeep of pharmacies in rural
areasEducationSource: OECD and ISAE
Power sharing in the areas of concurrent responsibility was not clear and became a matter of
disagreement.
The financing system is based virtually on complete revenue autonomy for the decentralised spending
bodies with only a marginal role of the central government transfers to finance extraordinary expenditure,
but also the separation of powers regarding the precise revenue sources was not clear.
That was the reason why the current government presented two draft laws clarifying spending tasks (code
of local autonomy) and liberalising the supply of local services (local service reform) and a draft law on
fiscal federalism.^6
The Government's bill for the enabling act for fiscal federalism has the objective of ensuring that Title V
of the Constitution will be fully implemented^7.
The government's bill is based on the essential principle for efficient and equitable fiscal federalism: the
principle of correlation or the principle of benefit, so as to establish close links at a financial level - and
therefore, at a political level - between autonomy and responsibility and between decisions about
spending and those about financing. The increased accountability resulting from moving in this direction
should have a significant positive impact on the consolidation of the public accounts.
Decentralised finance that is orderly and responsible can make the effort to consolidate Italy's accounts
more efficiently and less costly, while it can also promote greater social fairness since the decision-
making spans various levels of government.
Complying with the European requirements on public budgets also means that the public finance
constraints imposed on the central government are to be fulfilled by - and partially transferred to -
decentralised government entities, according to the internal Stability Pact. The process of establishing
(^6) Documents are available on the internet site : http://www.affariregionali.it/
(^7) See Forecast an Planning report for 2008 available on the internet site: http://www.tesoro.it/web/apri.asp?idDoc=18304