The president of the Occitanie regional chamber of accounts (CRC), wants to bring more transparency to this institution, often considered as the “financial policeman” of the use of public money. She also wants accountability. Interview.
The CRCs have evolved a lot in recent years, particularly in terms of communication. For what ?
It is a desire, one of my strategic axes. I have always wanted to provide a lot of transparency for the general public, because we cost too. We cannot only look at the public spending of others.
You can only make recommendations, you have no power of injunction, isn’t that frustrating?
No, it’s a reality. We control public policies and as such we do not comment on political choices. If a municipality decides to put its entire budget into municipal police and security, instead of culture, it is not our responsibility to judge. But we are a relay with other institutions. If we see regularity problems during an inspection, we can refer them to the public prosecutor.
Did you have a role in the affair of the mayor of Agde?
The prosecutor can never mandate us. We are two watertight institutions. We provide each other with information on which we can act. But the financial is one thing and the criminal is another. In the specific affair of the mayor of Agde, we had no role. On the other hand, we had some in the affair of the mayor of Sète where we revealed dysfunctions.
Where is the citizen platform launched last fall to encourage citizens to propose control themes?
We have around fifteen responses for Occitanie which is not enormous and, for the most part, it was more a matter of reports where we were asked to control this or that municipality… But one subject caught our attention: support public to the bullfight, the results of which will be known at the end of the year. We are going to look at this subject, the investigation has just started, particularly in Nîmes. And we are going to deal with a second subject which came up on the platform of the Court: the use of communities to consulting firms. I am delighted because it is a subject that I intended to cover. Four CRCs are active on this subject and are currently being monitored and this will end in July.
Bullfighting, consulting firms… Are these controversial subjects very closely linked to current events?
But it is a desire on my part, I want our controls to be linked to current events. We must be useful. We are also seeking to reduce delays by anticipating the parliamentary calendar in particular. You have to prioritize. There we have just started work on municipal daycare centers in Montpellier, the results of which will be known quickly. We will do others: social pricing of public services or the TER at 1 euro across the region. The report on the mountains, we released it at the end of autumn, in July, we will have a subject on the coast… The ecological transition occupies us a lot, it is also new. We are also going to release a theme on mosquito control by controlling the EID. We have just released on the adaptation of metropolises to climate change. We try to interest people.
You are often presented as a “financial policeman”; do you refute this designation?
No, I accept it because it is also an axis of our strategy in terms of regularity and probity in the use of public funds. We have 26 magistrates, we cannot be everywhere, I receive reports every day and anyone can be a reporting authority.
Do your controls earn you enmity with elected officials?
No, because we generally serve to improve situations. I meet a lot of them and they tell us that they want to respect the law, sometimes they say that it goes too far or that we are attacking a territory… But they recognize a usefulness in us. I am direct and I ask them to be too.
They say that community coffers are empty, what about it?
Every year we produce a report on local public finances on a national scale. When we look around, we know that the Departments are the most in difficulty because they are responsible for paying all the allowances, with less revenue. The municipalities and EPCI are doing very well: gross savings growing, sustained investment, bloated cash flow… The Region is more complicated because they no longer have control over revenues and VAT revenues are in sharp decline. But the Regions have the power to reduce their spending. To answer your question, there are money in the coffers.
“I always wanted to be useful”
Enarque of the République class, graduated in 2007, Valérie Renet, 58 years old, three children, has a literary background. Having passed through Khâgne, she “always wanted to be useful” and get “out of her comfort zone”. Her first position was spent abroad as cooperation attaché at an embassy in Ukraine, in Odessa, for 2 years then in Russia for 4 years. “I learned listening and diplomacy there.” Valérie Renet has always wanted to reconcile her professional and professional life. She joined the CRC as soon as she left Ena. From a position in French Polynesia, in Lyon, and in Dijon, she went through the CRC Occitanie and was made available to the Hérault prefecture to support the prefect Jacques Witkowski, emerging from Covid. She is appointed president of the CRC Occitanie in 2023 to replace Marie-Aimée Gaspari, who became prefect of Mayenne.
