Translated automatically by AI from the Italian original.
SYRACUSE – Political and administrative tensions have flared again at Syracuse Municipality over the new tender, worth more than €7.3 million, for a three-year contract to support tax revenue management. Michele Mangiafico, leader of the Civico 4 movement and spokesperson for lighthouses 80, 131 and 135 of Controcorrente, has called for the tender documents to be reviewed and possibly withdrawn under self-protection.
Prompted by the mayor’s announcement of an extraordinary audit into below-threshold contracts, Mangiafico urged that the spotlight also be turned on above-threshold tenders. He highlighted how several historic procedures at the Municipality had recorded only one participant or one qualified bidder.
Mangiafico’s four critical concerns
In his detailed intervention, the Civico 4 leader set out an analysis along four fundamental lines that he said put the regularity and effectiveness of the tender at risk:
- Protection and discrepancies over the 33 outgoing workers: The new documentation estimates 35 workers (32 part-time, equivalent to 27 full-time posts), creating opacity compared with the historic workforce of 33 employees and risking that job and wage continuity be left to the discretion of the future contractor. There is also concern over the fall in the fixed annual fee (from €1.865 million in 2021 to the current €1.690 million) against a labour cost estimated by Fiom at about €3.54 million over three years.
- The history of extensions (five years of management): The outgoing contract, managed by the ATI Municipia-TopNetwork consortium, covered 36 ordinary months and 24 months of extensions. Public disclosure is requested of all the authorising and financial documents that justified the contract extension, to prevent service continuity from becoming a grey area in proper planning.
- Risks of barriers to competition: The tender requires integration and compatibility with specific platforms already used by the authority (such as Suite Plus Plus and Civilia Next). Without prior transparency on technology costs, interfaces and the principle of equivalence, the rule risks illegitimately favouring the outgoing managers or suppliers already set up.
- Service quality and the authority’s autonomy: After five years of external management, the Municipality must demonstrate whether databases and collection rates have actually improved or whether the contract simply perpetuates a damaging technological dependence on external providers.
Appeal to the administration
“Protecting workers, fair competition between companies and the interests of citizens are not separate issues but essential conditions for good administration,” Michele Mangiafico said. “Given that this is a tender worth over €7 million that affects the authority’s ability to tackle tax evasion and manage its own revenue, we hope for extra attention, with a comprehensive review and possibly the withdrawal of the documents under self-protection before irreversible effects occur.”
