Monday,
April 30, 2007
"Creative" Italians make
Mountains out of Mole Hills
The
ANNOTICO Report
A 1971
Italian law gave subsidies to help alleviate the difficulties of life in
high altitude communities, by enabling boroughs
to federate into mountain communities.
However,
one of the greater benefits became the creation of bureaucracies.
BUT even stranger, at least a third of the 350 are in areas that are
"flat as a pancake"!!!
John Hooper in
Monday April 30, 2007
The
town of
Yet both have
succeeded - along with dozens of other less-than-elevated places - in getting
themselves classed as "mountain communities", in an adroit piece of
bureaucratic manoeuvring to raise cash.
According to the authors of a book of
investigative journalism to be published this week, boroughs throughout
southern
Not least among
the attractions of establishing one is that it creates a layer of bureaucracy. Palagiano is one of nine boroughs in the Mountain Community
of Murgia Tarantina where,
as the book's authors note, the average height above
sea level is slightly less than that of a hill outside
None of the
boroughs is officially classified as mountainous. But that has not stopped the Murgia Tarantina from equipping
itself with a president, a six-strong executive and a 27-member assembly.
Sergio Rizzo and
Gian Antonio Stella, authors of La Casta, found that
The president of
Italy's local authorities' association, Enrico Borghi,
was quoted in yesterday's Corriere della Sera
newspaper as saying "at least a third" of Italy's mountain
communities should be wound up.
john.hooper@guardian.co.uk
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