**INFORMATION FROM THE ONDA CERO WEBSITE**
The Legal Services of the Regional Federation of Municipalities have announced that the Environmental Reform Decree-Law may violate the Law on the Bases of Local Government.
The FMRM has requested a meeting with the Department of the Environment to discuss the regulations of municipal competence approved by the Autonomous Community.
The Federation has expressed its displeasure in a letter, as this environmental reform decree has not been consulted with local authorities, although the Director General of the Environment, Francisco Marín, assured Onda Cero that they had been working on the decree for eight months and that they had consulted all interested parties.
The legal services of the FMRM have warned that the Decree Law “may violate articles 25 and 26 of the Basic Law on Local Government”.
The Secretary General of FMRM, Manuel Pato, has said that the regional government "has forgotten to measure the impact and provide the resources that guarantee the financial sufficiency of the municipalities, and we have the duty to remind the regional government of this, to avoid the corresponding economic imbalance of local entities." Pato believes that the Autonomous Community has the capacity to transfer powers, but it also has the capacity to respect and comply with current legislation.
"Now we just have to wait for the reaction of the CARM's Department of the Environment, to reach that consensus and balance necessary with the main objective of overcoming any joint situation for the benefit of all Murcians."
Manuel Pato recalled that since 1988 there has been an agreement between the Federation of Municipalities and the regional government by which the FMRM is recognised as an interlocutor of the Executive.
Pato jokes about the transfer of regional powers to the town councils: "it may be that the CARM has found a way to resolve its deficit and that is by delegating powers without any cost to the regional Administration."
In order to go to the Constitutional Court, only the support of one seventh of the 45 municipalities in the region, that is, seven, would be necessary. Manuel Pato warns that there are municipalities with fewer than 20.000 inhabitants that do not have the means to carry out environmental impact assessments and stresses that the decree law has halved the period that the CARM had to produce reports on business projects "so they would not have time either."
