Almost four months after the Veneto Regional Administrative Court’s ruling on the complex “IRAS case”, published on 22 January, the battle ax between the Municipality of Rovigo and the elderly care institution is far from buried. Indeed, a new thorny chapter is looming that will be written in a courtroom.
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That of the Council of State. Because Palazzo Nodari has decided to challenge the TAR ruling by submitting an appeal to the Council of State. For this reason, the general secretary of the Municipality Alessandro Ballarin signed a resolution with which he entrusts the lawyer Giorgio Trovato of the associated law firm of the lawyers Antonio Cimino, Alessandro Pizzati, Giorgio Trovato based in Padua “with the task of representing and defending the Municipality of Rovigo in the appeal that the same body intends to promote before the Council of State”.
The reasons for the appeal are indicated in the document and are expressed in words that seem like boulders. A real indictment against the administrative judges. The TAR’s ruling, according to secretary Ballarin, is “prejudicial to the Municipality of Rovigoin the part in which it asserts that the Municipality would have implemented, in the person of the mayor pro tempore, an acknowledgment of debt and a promise of payment”.
But there’s more. Because for the Municipality the TAR judges actually made a mistake: “On the other hand – Ballarin writes – the same decision appears erroneous where it declared the inadmissibility of the appeal due to the failure to challenge the resolution of the Veneto regional council number 1293 of 22 October 2022”. To all this, then, we add that the TAR took its decisions considering the concession-contract to be an agreement between public administrations, whereas, according to Ballarin’s interpretation, which was also that of the former mayor Edoardo Gaffeo, “multiple elements (…) lead us to believe that the concession-contract of 21 January 2004 has a different legal nature” and, that is, that it is a “concession-contractual act”, which making the TAR’s sentence become final “would place the Municipality of Rovigo in a position of potential disadvantage” with respect to Iras’ claims and, finally, that Iras “expressed itself in favor of a settlement solution” but, faced with the “requested explanations of titles and amounts” from the Municipality, the data are “not received to date”. Therefore, green light to appeal against the TAR ruling.
At this point, it’s worth taking a step back. The appeal that Palazzo Nodari intends to promote is against the resounding rejection that the Municipality, led by the then mayor Gaffeo who, together with Ballarin, personally followed the entire Iras affair, received from the TAR after presenting a series of appeals, one main and three for additional reasons, against the withdrawal of Iras from the infamous 2004 concession-contract that binds Casa Serena, owned by the Municipality, to Iras itself. The TAR’s ruling was notified to the Municipality on 19 March. Since then, the possibility of an appeal has been floated but never confirmed. Confirmation has now arrived, with the formalization of the legal aid assignment to the lawyer Trovato. All for an expense for the municipal coffers, i.e. of the citizens, equal to another 13,282 euros.
