Desequilibrios Verticales en la Financiación Autonómica: el caso de la Financiación de la Atención a la Dependencia

Resumen:Las sucesivas reformas del sistema de financiación de las Comunidades Autónomas han permitido a éstas avanzar en su grado de autonomía financiera, pese a lo cual, continúa siendo escasa en la práctica. Si tenemos en cuenta los retos que los servicios públicos fundamentales que ellas gestionan suponen para las finanzas públicas en el medio y largo plazo, en particular, los servicios de cuidados de larga duración, resultaría conveniente reflexionar sobre la necesidad de establecer procedimientos que eviten que las CC.AA. tengan que recurrir periódicamente a la presión sobre la Administración Central para obtener recursos suficientes para financiar sus competencias, junto con algunos otros aspectos que permitirían mejorar el funcionamiento del futuro nuevo sistema.Abstract: The intense process of Spanish political decentralization has been accompanied by a permanent debate about regional demands to finance their competencies. The result of this has been a malfunctioning system, and an image of fiscal irresponsibility of the Autonomous Communities that does not correspond to reality. This has damaged their credibility, and also the whole of the territorial system born of the 1978 Constitution. Two factors have contributed to this conflict: the imbalances between the capacity to decide between income and expenditure at different levels of government (vertical imbalances), and a division of powers that has assigned to the regional governments the management of three out of the four pillars of the welfare state, whose expenditure is structural and growing. With each reform of the funding system, the vertical gap is revised, although without knowing exactly how the insufficiency is estimated. This approach does not seem to be correct, since it encourages the expectations of the Autonomous Communities of receiving additional funds, and harms the system's efficiency. On the part of the central government, system reviews always end up with an injection of funds whose amount is not associated with known and transparent criteria. Spain was relatively late in developing a system of Long-Term Care, only after Law 39/2006 to Support the Personal Autonomy and Dependent Care, which attempted to overcome a model based on family support and informal care for another that consecrated the universality, accessibility and equity of beneficiaries to services. To finance the service, the Government favored a mixed model in which the central government would contribute 50% and the regions the remaining 50% from its own resources, but without altering the financial system. The implementation of this fourth pillar of the welfare state has implied a huge public financial effort, going from 0.3% of GDP of expenditure in 2003 that was estimated before the implementation of the law by the White Book to 1% which is reflected by the Commission in its latest report on ageing dated in 2013. Spending on long-term care has grown 64% since 2009, having tripled in ten years, well above all forecasts. However, while the private contribution to funding has doubled, the public contribution has increased only 55%. Within it, the evolution is very different between the central government and the regions: the latter have increased their contribution making it 62.7% of the total, while the central government has reduced it, representing now 18%. If the expenditure differential with the European Union already foresees a growth of our long-term care expenditure, the predictable evolution of the three factors that influence spending on these cares, as indicated by different international organizations: increased longevity, longer duration of dependency and evolution of the price of care services, , an exponential growth of the financial effort will be necessary. If we take the convergence scenario in care and cost systems with the EU average, in 15 years the spending will be at 1.6% of GDP and by the 2060 horizon it will exceed 4%. That means that expenditure on long-term care would be above education expenditure and not far from health expenditure, i.e. the three major welfare state policies managed by the Autonomous Communities will account for almost 15% of GDP. If the current distribution is not changed, the Autonomous Communities should assume an additional 2.5 points of GDP, which is impossible with the current financing system. The overwhelming intensity of the economic crisis and the fiscal consolidation process have revealed a phenomenon that the medium-term forecasts were already pointing out: how to fit within the public budget constraints the expected growth of the expenditure associated with the ageing of the population, which with the Spanish territorial organization leads to discuss the distribution of resources between the various levels of government. The Autonomous Communities have proved that raising their own taxes is not enough to obtain resources with which to mitigate the adjustment that has been demanded. The need to have a margin for the exercise of autonomy is indispensable since the growth of expenditure is restricted by the limit established in Article 12 of the Organic Law of Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability. If the Autonomous Communities can hardly modify their revenues through taxes, the application of the expenditure benchmark implies to anchor the expenditure to a percentage of the GDP. This can only be modified by means of an agreement with the Central Government so that it can transfer a part of its income to regions. As long as this does not take place, the pressure on the regional spending on basic public services will force to reduce the rest of the items and, in particular, will hamper the recovery of public investment. Projections of age-related expenditure (health services and long-term care, mainly), together with the new regulatory scenario established by the budgetary stability law (structural balance and expenditure rule, mainly) reveal the need to correct vertical funding gaps. Regulated procedures that do not place on one side the role of perpetual claimant and, at the same time, serve the State to require greater fiscal discipline to the Autonomous Communities are needed. Besides, the debate and decisions about which and what level of public services people are demanding, their financing and it consequent distribution among governments surpass existing Fiscal and Financial Policy Council. Economic recovery is boosting public revenues, but the expenditure rule established in the stability law impede similar expenditure increases, so we can expect the appearance of regional budgetary surpluses in the short term. With current regulations, regions can only use these surpluses to pay off debt. We would consider very interesting a reform of the law in order to have the option to create rainy-day funds that would allow the Autonomous Communities to accumulate the product of those surpluses and use it in future crisis. In short, the new system of regional financing should be simpler than the existing model and should not be just a new injection of funds. It is necessary to advance in solving the structural problems of our territorial architecture and funding and in particular in the reduction of vertical imbalances, in order to avoid a regression in the welfare state.