Valencia City Hall is trying to dispel suspicions about its management and excludes the project owner from the body that decides on public contracts, who refuses to reveal which companies he works with. Two weeks after the Mediator of Greuges decided that the town hall must provide information on the companies with which José Marí Olano, responsible for Major Projects and president of the Works Commission, works or has worked over the last two years, the government team of María José Catalá removes him from this body.
The Local Government Council approved this Tuesday, the last of the year, on the eve of the Christmas holidays, the departure of the councilor questioned from this organization. Instead, it was decided that no elected official would assume the presidency and that this responsibility would be entrusted to the Secretary General of the City Hall, José Antonio Martínez Beltrán, one of the highest officials in the municipality. The Contractors Council is a technical assistance body with specific powers in the contractor selection procedure; checks whether it meets the requirements and evaluates the proposals, on which public funds depend. It is therefore essential that whoever controls it is not only independent, but also appears independent.
Catalá dismisses Marí Olano eight months after giving him this responsibility and after abstaining from at least half a dozen public procedures – during his first three months in office – to avoid incompatibilities, as reported by elDiario.es. It was the adjudicator himself who expressed his abstention, but he refused on several occasions to say which companies he worked with, alluding to the professional secrecy of the legal profession. The councilor does not have an exclusive dedication and combines his work as a councilor with his work as a lawyer, of which he knows nothing in the municipal council.
Until the Ombudsman’s resolution, reported by elDiario.es, the Catalá team repeatedly defended Marí Olano. He did this by rejecting opposition motions, in information commissions and even in reports sent to the mediator in which he endorsed the opacity of the councilor. In fact, the council rejected a proposal from Compromís similar to the decision adopted, and another from the PSPV which requested the list of customers. Olano had to stand out from the procedures in which more than 50 companies participated. One of them is the 293 million euro contract for the Valencia sewerage system, appealed by two companies after the award to the Acciona joint venture. Another of them is the renovation of Pérez Galdós Avenue, two of the largest carried out this year. Olano was already accused of having been a partner of the consulting firm KPMG until December 2023, at the same time when the consulting firm had received a contract of 130,000 euros from the Town Hall. These incompatibilities and this opacity made the experienced lawyer a radioactive advisor for the government team.
The government agreement this Tuesday, Christmas Eve, refers to issues such as transparency, integrity and conflicts of interest as principles within the body. Let us recall, for example, that public procurement law recognizes “integrity as a principle of public procurement which must contribute to preventing conflicts of interest and fighting corruption”. “Regarding the procurement tables, their technicality must be consolidated and their transparency guaranteed,” he continues.
Without going into the assessment of the behavior of the councilor, who refused on several occasions to provide information on the companies with which he worked, the letter underlines the need to remove any suspicion from the organization. The text continues as follows: “For these reasons, and above all with the aim of emphasizing the technical nature of the Permanent Procurement Commission of the Valencia City Council and guaranteeing its transparency, it is proposed to the Local Government Commission to eliminate any elected position from the composition of the Commission. » The proposal indicates that this is being done in other municipalities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Murcia, Seville or Cuenca.
The government’s agreement also makes no reference to the Ombudsman’s resolution, which obliges the council to provide the list of companies with which Marí Olano works or has recently worked, even though his influence is obvious. The resolution, sent at the beginning of December, in response to a complaint from the PSPV, specifies: “The identity of the people to whom professional services have been provided over the last two years, and which constitutes a legal cause for abstention, could be relevant public information to guarantee the objectivity of the Administration and the impartiality of the public authorities, and it would also be very necessary to ensure the prestige that these authorities must present to citizens so that social trust in the Administration is not broken, and because this trust is a pillar very important for the real effectiveness of the principles of the democratic rule of law. The dismissal of the advisor does not mean that the resolution has been executed.
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