The press conference of the council group I choose Arezzo:
“What are foundations? The Guido d’Arezzo and the InTour. This is the million dollar question we definitively ask you to answer. Because depending on their legal framework, if above all in fact we were to qualify them as bodies governed by public law, consequences would follow on their actions and on the control regime to which they are subjected”.
This is how the city councilors of Scelgo Arezzo, Marco Donati and Valentina Sileno, begin by presenting a preview of the question they intend to illustrate to the next City Council. “We have strong doubts about the way in which the foundations have been managed so far, practically without control of the City Council. And therefore we believe it is necessary to ask for clarification. We are supported above all by a ruling of the Court of Auditors taken in joint sections, therefore in the maximum expression of its authority, number 1 of January 2020 where it practically states that a foundation is a ‘body governed by public law’ if it has public bodies among its founding members , State, Region or Municipality, pursues significant public interests and receives public contributions that characterize its management. This is what happens with the Arezzo foundations.
After which there is another authoritative jurisprudence, both community and the Court of Cassation, however always in United Sections. Jurisprudence which concludes, coherently, by maintaining that the existence of public control cannot be limited to a merely formal examination on paper but must go as far as verifying whether the powers of which a public administration holds are effectively, stably and permanently exercised in a manner to allow this administration to have a substantial impact on the definition and implementation of the objectives.
Now: the budget of the Guido d’Arezzo Foundation, published on its website, presents income characterized mostly by contributions from the Municipality and the same can be said for the Arezzo Intour Foundation. Consequently, how can we consider both as subjects in which the presence of a public administration is not conditioning? How can they be included among the third sector bodies and therefore not be subjected, for example, to the controls of a City Council, to the application of the procurement code or to the rules governing competitions for the hiring of staff and top management figures? ? We intend to make these doubts, but above all the sentences available to us, available to the municipal administration. Perhaps in light of the same, the latter will ask the Court of Auditors the crucial question on how to behave”.
