The Senate Plenary will debate next week a bill presented by the PP so that councilors on maternity, paternity, pregnancy or serious illness leave can attend sessions, participate in decision-making and vote remotely by electronic and telematic means.
The initiative, which is very likely to pass given the PP's absolute majority in the upper house, proposes to modify an article of the Regulatory Law of the Bases of the Local Regime, in force for almost 40 years, to equalize councilors, members of the island councils and provincial deputies with deputies, senators and regional parliamentarians in this aspect.
Specifically, it proposes to add to article 46 that elected officials of local entities who are unable to attend sessions normally due to being in any of these situations can participate and vote remotely, yes, with due guarantees.
In this sense, councilors are required to send a request to the General Secretariat of the Plenary, at least 24 hours before the session is held, specifying the justified reasons that prevent their presence, attaching, where appropriate, the corresponding medical certificate, and the time in which they foresee that they will not be able to attend.
The mayor, president or whoever replaces him/her by regulation will then resolve in a motivated manner, after a report from the secretary of the Plenary.
The bill provides for a period of one year for city councils to adapt their operating regulations and enable the necessary means to make this telematic participation possible.
The PP says in the explanatory memorandum of its initiative that new technologies and digital transformation are "making great strides" in all areas of life and that public administrations "are not, nor should they remain, oblivious to them".
It recalls that with the covid pandemic, the use of new technologies and the holding of sessions of collegiate bodies remotely became widespread, although the modification by Royal Decree Law in 2020 of the Law of Bases of the Local Regime "omitted the necessary regulation of telematic voting in cases of leave for maternity, paternity, situation of risk pregnancy, or serious illness".
This, it adds, has meant that many local entities, making a strict interpretation of the rule, have refused to reform their respective regulations and continue without contemplating this possibility.
The Senate will debate that councilors on leave can participate and vote remotely
The PP's initiative, which is very likely to pass given the PP's absolute majority in the upper house, proposes to modify an article of the Regulatory Law of the Bases of the Local Regime.
