COMMENT: Being a municipal director (former councilor) in Drammen municipality seems to me to be “fire fines in hell”. The person concerned is under pressure from all sides all the time, and the dilemmas are continuously queuing up.
I am one of them who thought that the recently resigned councillor/municipal director, Elisabeth Enger, was both too invisible and too busy playing a political role, instead of fulfilling the role of facilitator for the politicians.
Elisabeth Enger leaves behind therefore, in my opinion, a legacy that must be difficult for the new municipal director, Trude Andresen, to bear.
Several of the politicians in Drammen nor do they seem to understand the division of roles between themselves as politicians and the administration.
My experience of the new municipal director in Drammen, is that through her way of working, she will try to dispel the impression that Drammen is an administratively governed municipality, but that the administration’s task is to “play the politicians good” with thorough investigations built on a solid factual basis.
However, it is not easy when, for example, someone has tried to make her co-responsible for the political decision, as the mayor and the rest of the position did, not to inform the entire municipal council about the municipal director’s and the municipal attorney’s views on the illegality of the proposal for the so-called refugee law.
Well, the director of the municipality must be so bad feel in connection with what has now happened in terms of the municipal director’s attempt to correct the shaky economy in Drammen municipality.
Trude Andresen has in two rounds submitted long lists of proposals in which areas she and the administration believe should be the subject of thorough investigations into absolutely necessary savings in the municipality. These lists have been put forward at the request of the politicians, and municipal directors have constantly emphasized that her lists are not proposals for decisions, but a desire to see what savings can be made without there being too great negative consequences. She has expressly asked the politicians not to reject any areas before any investigations have been carried out.
In the face of difficult savings proposals, politicians too often tend to do as in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, where Bøygen asks Peer to bypass
But no, of course this doesn’t happen. The strange thing is that it is primarily the representatives from the majority parties in the municipal council who are the foremost to undermine the authority of the municipal director.
First, the Conservative Party’s group leader was protected looking at the possibilities of savings at Mjøndalen Fire Station, the Pensioners Party’s group leader rejects the proposal to look at possible deductibles in connection with the distribution of aids to the needy living at home.
Both surely have good political reasons to protect these areas, but in my opinion the cases show that there cannot be very good communication between the governing parties and the municipal director. If the majority parties have already made up their minds, it is impossible to understand that they leave the municipal director “in the lurch” already at the first opportunity.
How much is left in the end of the Municipal Director’s savings lists will be interesting to see. In the face of difficult savings proposals, politicians too often tend to do as in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, where Bøygen asks Peer to step aside.
A good development of Drammen municipality is completely dependent on the relationship between the administration and the politicians being clarified and trusting, and that good fact-oriented investigations from the administration are used as a basis for political decisions, no matter how difficult the decisions may feel. .
