Governors Gustavo Sáenz (Salta); Arabela Carreras (Black River); Omar Gutiérrez (Neuquén) and Oscar Herrera Ahuad (Misiones) they questioned the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice which provided that the Government allocate 2.95% of the volume of co-participating taxes to the City of Buenos Aires.
The four leaders – who did not participate in the meeting that President Alberto Fernández held this Thursday with governors in Government House- expressed themselves in the last hours through a joint statement.
“The governors of the Argentine Republic who signed this communiqué express our concern about the decision of the Supreme Court of the Nation that allocates amounts that disproportionately increase the funds of the City of Buenos Aires to the detriment of funds corresponding to the Argentine Nation as a whole”, the text begins.
And they add: “The jurisdictional transfer of the Police, from the federal orbit to the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, carried out in the year 2016, is a fact whose costs were determinable, and that it was irrefutably demonstrated that the original transfer of national funds to CABA, was higher than what was necessary to absorb the police transfer. On the other hand, it is important to note that this is a circumstance that is common to all provinces: paying our own police with our resources.”
“We are convinced that no jurisdiction, in this case CABA, should receive resources above the real cost of the new responsibilities assigned to it; but we also firmly maintain that these national funds, when they are withdrawn, must inevitably be distributed equally absolutely federal and equitable among all the jurisdictions that make up the Argentine Nation,” state the provincial leaders.
Finally he adds that “Issues like these do nothing more than deepen the lack of genuine federalism that the provinces of the interior have suffered for decades and that materialize in inequities and disproportionate asymmetries”.
Meeting of Governors with the President
Gustavo Sáenz, Arabela Carreras, Omar Gutiérrez and Oscar Herrera Ahuad joined the other 14 who participated in the meeting this Thursday with the President -some in person, and others virtually- and who signed the statement released at the end of the meeting.
They are Axel Kicillof (Buenos Aires), Raúl Jalil (Catamarca). Jorge Capitanich (Chaco), Mariano Arcioni (Chubut), Gustavo Bordet (Entre Ríos), Gildo Insfrán (Formosa), Sergio Ziliotto (La Pampa), Ricardo Quintela (La Rioja), Sergio Uñac (San Juan), Alberto Rodríguez Saá ( San Luis), Alicia Kirchner (Santa Cruz), Gerardo Zamora (Santiago del Estero), Gustavo Melella (Tierra del Fuego), and Osvaldo Jaldo (Tucumán
After that meeting, President Alberto Fernández decided to challenge the members of the Supreme Court of the Nation and present a request for revocation “in extremis” against the precautionary resolution issued by the highest court that ordered the Government to allocate 2.95% of the volume of co-participating taxes to the City of Buenos Aires, it was officially reported.
“No jurisdiction should receive resources above the actual cost of the new responsibilities assigned to it (…) these national funds, when they are withdrawn, must inevitably be distributed in an absolutely federal and equitable manner among all the jurisdictions that make up the Argentine Nation”Gustavo Sáenz, Arabela Carreras, Omar Gutiérrez and Oscar Herrera Ahuad
“In an unprecedented, incongruous, and impossible-to-enforce ruling, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, without justifying the way in which it builds said amount, decides to increase that percentage to 2.95; that is, it grants the City of Buenos Aires more than 180 billion pesos in addition to what it already receives,” argued the Government, through a statement, after the meeting held between the President and Peronist governors at the Government House.
COMMUNICATION
A political ruling against the Argentine provinces and impossible to comply with ⬇️https://t.co/l7TFGKIHCU pic.twitter.com/CBXfonGBkG
– Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) December 22, 2022
Subsequently, the president reiterated in statements to the C5N channel that the ruling is “very unique” and “impossible to comply.”
Fernández indicated that the laws sanctioned by Congress “must be complied with” and added that the norm in question “has not been declared null or questioned in its constitutionality.”
On this point, he clarified that “beyond” wanting to comply with the ruling, he must send a law to Congress that “resolves a new budget” to establish “where the funds are going to come from”, and in that case if it is with “taxes, increase in withholdings or indebtedness”.
The president pointed out that the Court established that the Nation must assign 2.95% of the transfer to the City but that the Government “does not have the slightest idea” why they “arrived at that calculation” in the highest court, warning that “that money is not in the national budget.
He also considered that with the ruling there is a “clash of powers” because the highest court “achieved the incredible”, in reference to the fact that a resolution “contradicts the Executive and the Legislative Powers”.
“The national Constitution never mentions the city of Buenos Aires as part of the partnership,” said the head of state.
The Government, with the agreement of 14 governors who signed the document, considered that what was resolved by the highest court constitutes “a political ruling, facing the election year” and warned that, with this decision, “the Supreme Court intends to take resources away from all the provinces to give them to the head of government of the CABA”.
