Budapest mayor lambasts government budget bill

The government’s 2021 budget bill would “extremely seriously” impact not only local governments but local communities, too, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony said on Tuesday, adding that the budget was “against the interests of the nation”.

Karácsony said the government was using the coronavirus crisis “to destroy the local government sector”, which he suggested was the only remaining “counterbalance” to centralised powers.

Referring to provisions in the draft, Karácsony said that stripping municipalities of their 50-percent share in the centrally collected vehicle tax and increasing the municipalities’ solidarity tax would have a “dramatic” impact on local communities.

Concerning the latter tax, Karácsony said

Budapest currently pays an annual 10 billion forints to the central budget, which could grow nearly four-fold in future.

• Here is Hungarian government’s 2021 budget bill

On the other hand, Karácsony said, Budapest’s public transport revenues have dwindled, and the same could happen to local business tax revenues, the city’s primary revenue source.

Karácsony said he was aware the central budget was also impacted by the current recession, but added that “we still think that this was a deliberate political decision aimed at creating a difficult situation for municipalities, which cannot be explained by the country’s financial situation”.

The budget bill is “not only anti-democratic but it will make eliminating the social and economic crisis much more difficult, too”,

Karácsony said, adding that he would do everything to thwart the draft in its current form.

Karácsony also called the bill “a draft of treachery” and cited Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as saying on “innumerable occasions” that the government would not take measures that the Budapest council found unsatisfactory.

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Source: MTI