Opinions This is a debate post. The post expresses the writer’s views.
A selection of young people from Namdal writes in Namdalsavisa 07.05. They disagree with my proposal for new mergers of municipalities in Trøndelag. There are many good points in the post and I will address some of them here.
Primarily I probably need to point out that I have not proposed the compulsory amalgamation of 30 municipalities. I have said that coercion should be one of the means that can be used. The main rule should be voluntary, not unlike a certain municipal reform in 2014.
Like the post authors, many of their own party colleagues strongly disagree with the outcome. That is understandable, but I will still try to argue for my point of view.
First to the economy. It is asked what will happen to municipalities where the economy is already poor. This is of course completely impossible to predict. We can still point to some trends. We see that a large majority of local politicians in merged municipalities believe that the municipality functions better today than before the merger.
We can too say something about how the development in the population, which has a central influence on the economy, looks like. That development shows a very gloomy picture in smaller municipalities. The exodus has continued, and despite promises from almost all parties, no one has managed to reverse the trend. The question for the post authors is the following: will more of the same medicine reverse this?
Many are lifted good points about the location of the municipal centre, how democracy should work and whether this will lead to the centralization of power and services.
Let me try to reverse the premise a bit here. In 2022, Menon Economics did a review of “Standing in Norwegian municipalities”. Here one finds that all municipalities struggle to some extent to meet the requirements that the legislation sets for them. However, there is great variation.
Those municipalities which struggles are mostly characterized by a couple of factors: population size, changes in population numbers, economic room for action, degree of centrality and party fragmentation.
The concern that a merged municipality will struggle with its tasks, so that does not seem to be the case, the country as a whole. Perhaps rather the opposite.
In contrast, one opens larger municipality also for a municipality with several tasks. The post authors refer to the so-called generalist municipality principle. This is the principle that states that all municipalities must have the same tasks.
The generalist municipality principle leads to that tasks that are to be given to a municipality of 200,000 inhabitants must also be given to the one of 400. It goes without saying that this places major limitations on the tasks that the municipalities can be given.
If you had, however looked at in a much larger municipality, the possibility of moving power here would also be significantly greater.
A good example is what is really the background for my play. Namely, what the municipal structure should look like, if the county council is to be liquidated. If this is done, the municipality itself will be able to manage the upper secondary school, public transport and most other tasks of the county municipality. This will for all practical purposes make the municipality more interesting, and above all, decentralize power.
With the current municipal structure neither this, nor any other significant transfer of power is possible, unless one were to depart from the principle that all municipalities must solve the same tasks. I suspect that the post authors are probably skeptical of just that.
When it comes to where a municipal center will be located, this is not something that would be natural for me to point out. At the same time, one has to ask how important the town hall’s location really is these days. I would like to argue that good schools, dignified care for the elderly and other public services of high quality are more important than a short distance to the town hall.
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We cannot accept this
The big question are not really mergers or not. The question is to be or not to be for district Norway. As a district youth, I would argue that it is not the municipality’s name, familiarity with local politicians or where the mayor has an office that will make people move out to the districts. What can help, however, are public services of sufficient quality, interesting workplaces and a solid living environment.
A lot of this parts of Namdalen can still boast today, but here too the differences are big. Municipal mergers are not primarily about helping the large and strong municipalities, but rather about contributing to the smaller municipalities also being able to take part in welfare growth, and avoiding cuts year after year.
I would argue the following: my plan is neither centralizing, destructive to municipal services nor dangerous to the municipal economy. On the contrary, it is a proposal that will allow us to shift power down to the municipalities, ensure services of a better quality for all the municipality’s residents and give greater economic room for action in the years to come.
That’s fine both good for both Namdalen, Trøndelag and Norway, right?
