Make exclusive dedication as a councilor of the Valencia City Council, earning 100% of the public salary, compatible with a private professional activity, also paid. This is the situation that three of the four councilors of the Vox municipal group in the Valencia City Council will foreseeably have starting in February.
The first to obtain compatibility to perform the function of lawyer and as councilor of the Government team was the councilor of Devesa-Albufera, José Gosálbez. Although he began his mandate with 75% part-time dedication and a salary of around 70,000 euros, at the end of 2023 he requested to obtain full-time dedication and compatibility to continue practicing as a lawyer, as a supposedly marginal activity. Thus, he obtained permission from the municipal secretary and began to collect 100% of the public salary corresponding to exclusive dedication, that is, 82,976 euros, plus the income corresponding to his work as a lawyer.
To this situation will be added, except unforeseen, the Councilor for Agriculture, Cecilia Herrero, and the spokesperson for the municipal group and Councilor for Parks and Gardens, Juan Manuel Badenas, who also have salaries of 82,976 euros and 91,288 euros corresponding to their exclusive dedication, and have also requested compatibility to practice as lawyers. In the case of Badenas, like Gosálbez, he regained exclusive dedication in December 2023.
In both cases they already have a favorable report from the municipal secretary, so the proposal is expected to be approved this Thursday in the Finance Commission and signed in plenary session this month.
According to the reports, both declare that “their activity in the legal profession does not interfere with their status and performance of their duties as an elected official” and the possibility of compatibility is recognized “except for the official shift, in a conditional manner.” to maintain the circumstances for its consideration as a marginal activity from the functional, schedule and economic points of view and to comply with the remaining requirements derived from the applicable regulations.” Furthermore, it highlights that the exercise of activity as lawyers “must not imply any conflict of interest with the performance of their position or harm general interests.”
The reports, however, do not detail the hours that both councilors will dedicate to the legal profession or the remuneration they will obtain from it, and only state as a requirement to be able to supervise compliance with the supposed marginality that the interested parties must incorporate “all the information referring to the exercise of this private activity in the successive Declarations of Assets and Activities presented in the municipal Interest Registry.”
Although there are other councilors of the Valencia City Council who make their exclusive dedication compatible with a second private activity, they are the only ones who alternate it with the practice of law where it is more complicated to estimate the time dedicated to it in compliance with the supposed marginality. and absence of collision with full dedication to municipal activity.
The report cites other cases without mentioning the names, but these are councilors who work outside their teaching hours or in a case authorized in 2018 as an Auxiliary Nursing Technician in the Health Department of the Manises Hospital.
For example, the spokesperson for the socialist municipal group, Borja Sanjuán, has full-time work with a salary of 79,204 euros and a recognized compatibility to work as a professor at the University of Valencia, an activity to which he dedicates between three and four hours a week. , as explained to questions from elDiario.es. This activity brings him between 450 euros per month.
The mayor of València, María José Catalá, is also full-time with a salary of 94,291 euros and maintains the compatibility that the City Council authorized her on December 29, 2022 when she was spokesperson for the PP in the opposition. Thus, she has been able to work as an associate professor at the International University of Valencia (VIU), which she herself sold as Minister of Education in 2013 for 4 million euros to Grupo Planeta, after an investment since its creation of 34 million by the Generalitat. . Despite everything, she has never made public her salaries as a teacher and currently as mayor she has not clarified whether she continues to teach effectively and whether she charges for it.
Compromís Reviews
For Compromís, the request by councilors Badenas and Herrero to make their responsibility as full-time Government councilors compatible with the exercise of the legal profession “is a demonstration of the authentic vocation and commitment of the Vox representatives to the Valencians.” “: work little and use the maximum of public resources for one’s own benefit.”
The Valencian mayor, Ferran Puchades, considers that the municipal secretary’s report allows these councilors “a marginal dedication as a lawyer, but in practice it is very difficult to define what a marginal exercise consists of since it does not evaluate or what is the amount that could be receive or how much time they can dedicate outside of City Hall.”
According to Puchades, “exclusive dedication as a government councilor entails an exclusive commitment to citizens, without a maximum of days or hours, and practicing a liberal profession such as law is completely incompatible with the hours of attention to citizens and their responsibilities as members of the Government” and adds: “The Vox councilors have no shame in mocking the citizens. The lack of dedication to their obligations is already well known, as their daily work agendas make very clear, or when Badenas and Herrero, in full management of Dana, considered it more preferable to go on a weekend in Morella instead of being on the job. in the towns of Valencia that were affected.”
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