The committee that investigated ten years of Limburg administrative culture deliberately did not come up with a tick list with recommendations.
Because you can politically differ on matters such as governance culture, actions and behaviour. We consciously did not want to get involved in this, said committee chairman Arno Visser in the Limburg Parliament.
In a special meeting, he could ask questions to the authors of recent reports on integrity and governance culture.
Conclusion
The conclusion of the report on ten years of administrative culture – entitled ‘Angels do not exist’ – is that there is no systematic pattern of extensive integrity violations in Limburg and the province does not differ from the rest of the country.
‘Just Dutch’
“It’s just like the Dutch who live in Limburg,” said researcher Professor of Public Administration Paul Frissen. “But at the same time, that’s not a reassuring conclusion. Because everywhere in the country much more attention needs to be paid to the way in which contradiction and power and counter-power is organized. It is up to you as a politician to do something about it,” says Frissen.
Self-reflection
Member of Parliament Marcel Thewissen of SVL, however, had little faith in this. He argued that the Limburg Parliament is really bad at self-reflection. “You give a lot back to us, but we can’t do this ourselves. Can you please make this advice very concrete for us”, Thewissen asked.
Committee chairman Visser then suggested that a committee be set up that would, for example, look at the image of the province as an ATM and how it goes with the granting of subsidies or the staffing of provincial assignments. “There is now a moment of relative calm. There are enough building blocks – also in other reports – to do things differently in the future. There is now a moment of reflection”, said Visser.
Nearly 300 notifications
The committee has received a total of 286 reports from 144 people about alleged integrity violations and conflicts of interest. Nearly 40 percent related to the province, 45 percent to a municipality, 10 percent to matters of both the province and the municipality and 5 percent to the water board.
But especially SP and the Party for the Animals wondered what to do with this because they do not know exactly what it is about and who it concerns. “Let me know. Then we can do something with it and learn something from it. I read a lot of stories, but few that you question,” said SP party chairman Marc van Caldenberg. Commission chairman Visser replied that this would be in conflict with the agreements made with the notifiers.
Confidential
This meant that information was treated confidentially so that they could speak openly about everything. “We would not make statements that could be traced back to individuals,” Visser said.
He did say that many reports were about cases that were fought out to the Council of State because the policy was not understood and clearly explained and people felt stifled by that policy and regulations.
fierce collision
Notable absentees from the session in the Limburg Parliament were the two researchers who had investigated the provincial involvement in the IKL affair on behalf of the province. They had called in sick. De Limburger reported last week that there was a fierce clash between the province and one of the researchers, former professor of public administration Wim Derksen.