The reform of the consolidated text on the organization of local authorities could contain a “surprise” welcome to the mayors. In fact, the government seems to have decided to amend the Severino law, the law seen as a bogeyman by the majority of directors, which provides for the incandidability, ineligibility and forfeiture of those elected definitively convicted and suspension for 18 months even in the event of conviction in first degree. In Calabria there were several excellent “victims” of the law introduced by the then Monti cabinet: by the former governor Joseph Scopellitito the mayors of Reggio Calabria and Rende respectively Giuseppe Falcomata And Marcellus Manna, just to mention the latest striking cases. Looking at the present, the novelty is represented by the government’s choice to include the modification of the Severino law in the reform of the Tuoel, launched as a preliminary step in the Council of Ministers of last 7 August. The one approved at Palazzo Chigi is a draft law-delegation containing the general principles destined to become effective through legislative decrees. However, a perspective can be glimpsed. Yes, because an “organic revision of the provisions on the ineligibility, ineligibility and incompatibility” of local administrators has been included in the body of the provision. It will be the Meloni executive who will have to decide, within 12 months, the details of the measure, but the hypothesis of eliminating the 18-month suspension in the event of a conviction even in the first instance appears concrete.
Scopelliti, Falcomatà and Manna among the excellent “victims”.
There are several local politicians entangled in the mesh of the Severino law. Calabria, to be honest, was perhaps the land where the effects of the measure that bears the name of the former Minister of Justice of the Monti government were experienced in the most important way. In 2014 the then president of the Region, Joseph Scopelliti, (centre-right exponent), was sentenced to 6 years in prison for abuse of office and forgery as a former mayor of Reggio Calabria. A sentence that set the planned procedure in motion and led to his suspension as governor for 18 months. The effective suspension by then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi came on May 3 of that year. Calabria went to early voting the following November: Mario Oliverio, a member of the Democratic Party, prevailed. The same fate, a few years later, will be the turn of another tenant of Palazzo San Giorgio, Giuseppe Falcomata, dem exponent, sentenced to one year by the Court of Appeal for abuse of office and for facts attributable to the activity of mayor of Reggio. A few months ago – and before the dissolution of the municipal council was decreed due to mafia infiltration – it was instead the turn of the mayor of Rende, Marcellus Mannaleave his seat after the sentence of 2 years and 8 months inflicted on him in Salerno for corruption in judicial documents.