AS PLAID CYMRU councillors stepped up their criticism on the conduct of the County Council’s budget debate, the ruling Labour and Independent has responded by attacking the Plaid proposals. Last week, Plaid released a press statement following the budget which, amongst other things, slated the Labour/Independent administration and pointed out: “All the cuts and charges could have been avoided this year had they accepted a Plaid Cymru opposition group proposal to take £6.2m (under 10%) from the Earmarked Reserves of £73.5m.”
The statement went on to claim: “Our people have suffered cuts and extra charges to no avail. What was truly depressing was seeing the council’s Chief Executive and Head of Resources intervening in the debate. This council is obviously officer-led, as the Executive Board is too weak to run the council.” Watching the meeting on playback, a key role in the budget debate was played by controversial Chief Executive, Mark James. Intervening in the political repartee, and siding with the administration after stating that the Council’s Head of Finance could not comment on the opposition’s proposals, Mr James proceeded to comment on them and roundly reject them.
Mr James, whose ‘peculiar’ pension arrangements were the subject of a humiliating climb down by the Council last year and who lately had his request for a £400k plus severance package booted into the long grass, appeared intent on ensuring that the budget proposals before the Council were accepted as written with neither amendment nor redaction. The Labour/Independent grouping made sure that Mr James’ bidding was followed. In their joint statement, both Cllr Kevin Madge and deputy leader Cllr Pam Palmer heavily criticised Plaid’s approach. Leader Cllr Kevin Madge said: “All in all, whilst we welcome sensible debate, and would certainly have welcomed Plaid Cymru’s input during the extensive consultation process, what they finally came up was not only too little, too late, it was not workable, not plausible and certainly not in the best interests of Carmarthenshire.”
Cllr Palmer added: “I repeatedly asked for input from the opposition group for the budget and would happily have given them credit for any workable suggestions, since these are challenging times and we need to work together. Despite this, and lengthy consultation, no proposals were put forward until [shortly before the budget debate], which left no time for consideration.” In the course of the debate, Cllr Dai Jenkins, of Plaid Cymru, pointed out that while frontline departments had suffered cuts to their wage budgets, the Council’s press office had received almost a 13% increase in its own. Councillor Madge concluded his observations on the tough choices made by the Council by saying: “We believe we have done the best we can with what has been the most difficult budget settlement in the history of this council.”
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