Manning the Lifeboats

The founders of modern Italy established a strong central government 100 years ago to unify a collection of hopelessly disparate cities, petty principalities, provinces and kingdoms. Mussolini centralized further to solidify Fascist power, and since World War II, the government has been unable to break the habit of taking everything upon itself. As a result, its power is so centralized that Rome rules on everything down to road repairs and hunting licenses, delegating authority through weak provincial governments and even providing funds for local government.

This kind of grip eventually strangles. Every expenditure must be approved by a national Court of Accounts; since proposals flood in at the rate of 25,000 daily, the court is irretrievably backlogged. Eight years ago, Parliament voted $160 million to modernize Naples; only $5,000,000 has actually been spent. Two years after Parliament voted $656 million for 4,710 school buildings to ease an acute shortage of space, work had started on only 15 of them.

Until recently, Italians accepted this "dictatorship of the bureaucracy" with sad fatalism. Lately, however, unhappiness has changed to anger. Since last autumn, all sorts of groups--firemen and farmers, nurses and teachers--have gone on strike, as much in rage against the government as in quest of higher pay. Now, after 20 years of study and a year of parliamentary debate, Rome is finally responding. This week, in what may eventually be regarded as the most significant Italian election in two decades, 30 million Italian voters are choosing regional councils that will transfer considerable power from the capital to the countryside.

Red Belt. The regional bodies, with anywhere from 30 to 80 councilors, depending on population, are akin to England's county councils. They will plan and administer but not legislate. Eventually they will be responsible for such areas as public health, public works, forestry, mass transportation, water supply, welfare and local planning. But they may well find themselves running afoul of Rome quite often until the areas of authority are clearly worked out. Five such councils are already operating on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and in the northern border regions of Valle D'Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where the demand for local government has been particularly strident. In this week's elections members of similar councils are being selected in the 15 other principal regions of mainland Italy. Twelve of the 15 lean toward the Christian Democrats. In the others, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria, which constitute the Red Belt above Rome, Communists are expected to have the strongest voices in the new councils.

Each of the 15 regional governments will confront vastly different problems. Lombardy, center of the bustling northern industrial belt, home of one-sixth of Italy's population and source of one-fourth of its gross national product, faces the side effects of prosperity. Congestion, pollution and uncontrolled industrial growth are growing concerns, especially around Milan. Some Milanese spend five hours a day merely getting to and from work; the regional council intends to make transportation one of its priority topics. Says Piero Bassetti, a 41-year-old textile millionaire and Milan's leading Christian Democrat: "The regions are a way of rebuilding the state from the ground up, while tinkering in Rome is like rebuilding from the roof down. The regions are the lifeboats for the sinking Italian state."

Despite the fact that the regional governments will have scant taxing authority, Bassetti contends that they can wield broad power. Lombardy's council, for instance, will be responsible for supervising "fairs and markets." Bassetti, who may well be named president of the council, intends to interpret that broadly and press for an overhaul of the Milan stock market.

Challenge from Below. Five hundred miles south of Lombardy, Campania's regional government will concentrate on the problems of an underdeveloped region. If Milan is the city of smog, skyscrapers and soldi (money), then Naples, Campania's capital, is supposed to be the city of sea, sun and song. In fact, Naples is fast becoming the Calcutta of Europe, where rats outnumber people 7,000,000 to 1,300,000, unemployment is about 20%, and the classic motto, "See Naples and Then Die," has been revised by pessimists to "See Naples Before It Dies." The bay, whose glories were once celebrated by tenors, has become a squalid sump awash in oil, sewage and industrial wastes. The city will soon have an Alfa Romeo auto plant employing 15,000, but even when unemployment drops, Naples will still be plagued by slums, overcrowding, and a shocking infant mortality rate (52.3 per 1,000 births in Campania v. 29.1 in Lombardy). Economist Vittorio Cascetta feels that the new council's most important function will be planning. Neapolitans know what their root problems are. Now, for the first time, says Cascetta, "local planners will have some authority to implement their work."

Cynics insist that the regional councils are impractical. Some of Italy's parties have not fully endorsed the idea. One complaint of the program's critics, not entirely baseless, is that regions will only add another layer of bureaucracy to the present layers of municipal, provincial and national government. But another reason for objecting could be that the councils pose a serious threat to central power. Many of the newly elected delegates are vigorous young activists who are likely to use their posts to challenge Rome's entrenched pezzi grossi --the political big shots.

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