Debate post This is a debate entry, written by an external contributor. The post expresses the writer’s views.
Soon to be The municipalities’ revenue system is dealt with by the Storting. It has been a long process where we have stood together across parties to lift the challenges we have in Fredrikstad: That we have service needs and living conditions challenges far higher than the national average and incomes far below the national average. This calculation does not add up.
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Rebelling against the state’s treatment of Fredrikstad: – We should have had 263 million more
We hope that the fight we have fought for a fair distribution of resources to the municipalities will be heard by the Storting.
It has been necessary to start here, start with the unfair starting point which means that we, Fredrikstad municipality, lack many millions to operate our services as expected.
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The municipalities’ income system must become fairer
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Welcome back, Right!
I start with this because anyway, at the next crossroads, we will also have to think even more about the income system. When it has been fairly distributed, then we have to raise a new issue:
Nature’s resilience and the need for jobs.
As the financing of municipalities is today, there is no weighting of the environment. (Apart from power companies’ natural resource tax).
In contrast, the number of jobs created and the number of tax kroner are weighted. Therefore, there is a rush to get as many jobs as possible to their local environment, a battle against other municipalities, because 1,000 new jobs means increased tax revenue.
One can understand that in such matters it becomes easy for a politician to say yes to the destruction of untouched nature or cultivated land, or other LNF areas (Agriculture/nature/leisure) that are of societal and environmental benefit that cannot only be measured in money.
The job argument trumps the weighting of nature’s place, and rather than having an active green policy for the return of areas to LNF, people are mostly concerned with creating jobs in their own municipality. Perhaps even if the neighboring municipality has a far more suitable area that does not require you to destroy unique landscapes, ecosystems and outdoor areas.
Example: The dredging case – if you had spent a little more money, you would have done what is most environmentally sound, namely depositing or cleaning on land. You don’t do that, because capital perishes, and the environment suffers.
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No new city council processing of the dredging permit: Sekkelsten trusts the Norwegian Environment Agency
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Can Fredrikstad afford to allow the dumping of poison at Svaleskjæra?
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Can we afford to sacrifice the Oslofjord?
Therefore it should, in the same way as tax revenue is weighted, be discretionary grants to municipalities that have a sustainable land policy. To municipalities that work actively to re-establish areas such as LNF and who dare to fight for trees and bees in the same way as you always fight for new jobs.
Jobs are important, they are very important, but if we continue to destroy nature in the same way as we are doing now, we will end up in a serious nature and climate crisis in a few years. The workplaces of the future must be created in harmony with nature, not as an opposite.
It is easy to understand that money should trump the environment when you have little to worry about, so perhaps this is the new income system battle we have to take up in the Storting, when we hopefully reach the goal of a fair distribution this year.
Until then, we will work as best we can on behalf of nature and the environment here in Fredrikstad.
