No, the Regional Council of Sardinia has not given the green light to the hiring of wives, common-law partners and relatives in the offices of the groups in the building on Via Roma. There is still a glimmer of hope for lovers (as someone on the benches joked), but that is another story entirely, in itself outside the rules and certainly not in the light of day.
So what happened? The story is linked to a law that was not on the agenda, which entered the chamber in recent days with an “urgent procedure”, as provided for by article 102 of the council regulations: the text is voted on by the honourable members without going through the committees. They do it when there is a rush to approve. In this case the issue was the changes to another law, law 2 of 2014, which regulates “rationalisation and containment of expenditure relating to the functioning of the statutory bodies of the Region”. In that text, which has undergone more than one tweak over the years – and was born from the need to clarify after the scandal of funds to groups that for some meant prison and convictions – the hiring of employees of political parties in the Council is also regulated. To give you an idea: in the previous legislature there were about 140.
The text in force until a few days ago stated: the employee "cannot be the spouse or common-law partner of one of the regional councilors in office in the legislature in which the assignment is made, nor have a degree of kinship or affinity with them within the fourth degree" . And this was true, according to the 2014 law, for those seconded (i.e. transferred to the Council from other public bodies) but also for fixed-term workers of any origin. This was written, and it was a duplicate, both in paragraph 7 quater (fixed-term) and in paragraph 7 quinques (seconded) of article 9: the regulatory reference becomes important. Because in a law it is enough to eliminate a "not" present in a previous text to overturn its objectives: the devil is in the details.
The hastily approved law established that the prohibition of paragraph 7 quater "is abolished". If it stopped there, and also given the way it was approved under the table, it seemed like yet another "family scandal of the caste". Because at first glance it seemed that the prohibition would remain in place only for employees seconded by other administrations and not for other employees. In reality the new law, in another passage that intervenes on the previous one, says that the rules are applicable to all employees of the Regional Council groups, because those for those seconded are also extended to other call systems. In short: prohibition cancelled on one side and re-extended on the other. To clean up "regulations". Case closed.
"The suppression of the prohibition provided for by a paragraph," explains the President of the Regional Council, Piero Comandini, "arose from a need for greater regulatory clarity. The suppressed provision was, in fact, provided for in two different paragraphs of the same article. The prohibition is now contained only in paragraph 7 quinquies of Article 9 of Regional Law no. 2 of 2014, as amended by Article 2, paragraph 8 of the new law, according to which both employees on secondment and those hired on a fixed-term basis cannot be spouses or cohabitants more uxorio of one of the regional councilors in office in the legislature in which the assignment is conferred, nor have a degree of kinship or affinity with them within the fourth degree."
