To make himself understood, Igor Dupin takes an image. “You see, our department is like a patient in the hospital, an infusion in each armdescribes the director general of the services of the departmental council of the Ardennes. On the one hand, the State injects it with venom: the expenses to be assumed. On the other hand, the remedy: endowments. » Sitting next to him, the president of the department, Noël Bourgeois (Les Républicains, LR), specifies: “And the two don’t flow at the same speed…” Igor Dupin spins the metaphor: “The question is whether we want to kill the patient or cure him…” “The answer is clear. They want to suffocate us”continues the president.
“Financially Strangled”, Mr. Bourgeois does not know how to balance his budget for 2023. He is missing 20 million euros. Extreme, the situation of this small department of 270,000 inhabitants is a scarecrow for many local authorities struggling with degraded finances.
In Charleville-Mézières, in his office with windows overlooking the Meuse, the president of the departmental council is redoing the accounts once again. The 4% increase in active solidarity income (RSA) is 2.4 million in 2023 (double this year). The 3.5% thaw in the civil servants’ index point will cost nearly an additional 1 million euros. The best remuneration for family assistants (who take in placed children), 700,000 euros. The Ségur measures for health personnel, as well. And so on. In all, the county council must finance 5 million euros in new expenditure in 2023. To this is added, of course, the energy crisis: 2 million euros. “Today we can’t take it anymore.wrote Noël Bourgeois to François Sauvadet, president of Departments of France, the association of elected. It is simply our survival that is at stake.”
“We tightened the bolts”
Because, at the same time, revenues are falling. The local elected official regrets that the State relies more and more on the departments to finance individual solidarity allowances. In 2002, the remaining charge was 5 million euros for the Ardennes; today it is 46 million, assures Noël Bourgeois. “In twenty years, this represents 600 million euroshe points out.. Can we still go on like this? » The response is induced. Especially, he observes, that his department is marked by an unemployment rate higher than the national average (9.8% against 7.4%), lower per capita income, an aging population…
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