The municipality is still without an approved budget.
Earlier this month, council provisionally approved the budget, provided the administration submits certain outstanding reports.
According to Hans-Jurie Moolman, the leader of the DA caucus, no reports have been sent to the council, nor has the continuation of the council meeting taken place.
Council had given the administration 14 days to provide reports.
According to Dr Len Mortimer from the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University, if the budget is not approved, then the MEC needs to intervene in terms of section 139 of the constitution.
“Except if the municipality was given exemption from the MEC to carry on with the previous year’s budget. Failing which, any expenses would be deemed as unauthorised expenditure,” Mortimer said.
The provincial treasury has already withheld the payment of the equitable share to the municipality.
“Legally, we do not know what provisional approval means because the municipal budget and reporting regulations are clear on what constitutes approval of the budget of a municipality.
As a consequence, the equitable share, which was due on 7 July, did not flow. In terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act, ‘to the extent that you do not have a budget, any transactions that will be affected by the municipality, effective from 1 July must be endorsed by the finance MEC’” News24 quoted Ndlela Kunene, head of the provincial treasury.
The conditions for approving the budget include several reports. Among them are all the overtime that was paid in the previous financial year, any investigations into irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure for the last four fiscal years and full details of all legal proceedings for or against the J.B. Marks Local Municipality in the past five years. They include the following: A detailed breakdown of all private security services rendered to the council in the past three years; full details of all transactions concluded with service providers below the R30,000 threshold in the past three financial years and all means employed in removing household waste regarding the waste trucks for the last two fiscal years. Written proof that all directors and senior managers were appointed in line with the council resolutions is also required.
“It is simple; we want accountability. These are not new issues. They are issues that we have asked to be dealt with for a very long time. We need the reassurance that these issues have been dealt with properly if the budget is adopted. It is in the best interest of the community at large,” Moolman said.
According to Moolman, council, as a collective, decided to set conditions for approving the budget. Therefore, if these conditions are not met, then council, as a collective, cannot pass the budget.
According to him, the verbatim record, which is a sound recording of the council meeting, reflects that this decision was made by council as a collective and was not only conditions set by the DA.
“We want service delivery, but there are certain issues for which we have been asking for answers, for a long time.
We have never received these answers. Council cannot approve another budget until it is satisfied that there are no issues with the way money is being spent,” Moolman said.
The municipal spokesperson, Willie Maphosa, told News24 that, according to the council resolution, the budget was adopted on 3 July and the use of the word “provisional” in a subsequent media statement was “an honest mistake”.
Yet, earlier, he had replied to the Herald’s enquiries by stating that, “The final approval of the budget depends on the administration submitting certain outstanding reports related to municipal operations. Council will reconvene on or after 14 July 2020 to consider these reports and then pronounce substantively on the status of the budget.
“Municipalities across the country adopted their budgets with certain conditions attached for approval.
One of the critical conditions is that a budget must be cashed back and funded.
“This funded budget must be backed by reasonably-anticipated revenue to be collected by the municipality through rates and taxes. Secondly, the municipality should ensure that its budget is Covid-19 compliant and indicate clearly how the council intends to mitigate the pandemic.
“The budget must also be developmental and clearly direct resources and free basic services to indigent communities. There is nothing new about a budget being approved with certain conditions.
The conditions in question have no bearing on the budget itself as management will have to deal with those issues administratively,” reads a statement issued by the office of the municipal manager.
According to the statement, the required reports have not been served before council as the meeting is yet to be scheduled.
“It remains a legal obligation of the speaker to convene a council meeting as and when he prefers,” the statement concludes.