Minister Rijkaart: ‘Municipalities and provinces perform many tasks for the national government. These subnational authorities are close to the people and know well what is needed. Yet the system falters: they indicate that sometimes there is no good balance between tasks, resources, and execution capacity to do the work properly. Therefore, we want to gain better insight into what the national government and subnational authorities need from each other. We will continue the conversation about this.’
The ROB states in its reports that an imbalance has arisen between (delegated authority) tasks, powers, and resources of municipalities and provinces, leading to friction. Due to this imbalance, both ministers and subnational authorities have too little ability to steer the effective and efficient execution of the tasks assigned to municipalities by the legislator, according to the ROB. The ROB recommends the legislator ensure a clear and complete overview of the delegated authority tasks of municipalities and structurally ensure a balance between ambitions and funding, powers, and risks of these tasks.
In the parliamentary letter, the cabinet states that it finds it important that subnational authorities can function well. It considers it undesirable that more detailed steering leads to less and less decentralized policy freedom. Therefore, in the coming months, the cabinet wants to explore with the umbrella organizations of municipalities and provinces how better monitoring of delegated authority tasks can contribute to the discussion about the balance between ambitions, tasks, resources, and execution capacity. For example, by using existing research on specific policy areas and the new grant form Special Fund Allocation (BFU).