Bring basic services in-house and apply common sense to the city's finances

The financial and insourcing policy of the Socialist Party of Iceland is based on a simple idea: shared infrastructure should serve the public and therefore should not be marketized or driven by special interests. The City of Reykjavík should be a strong, fair, and responsible employer that protects basic services and ensures that residents' funds are used for their benefit. While the city fails to adequately provide its basic services in key areas, it is unacceptable for it to generate a surplus of several billion, among other things, through asset sales and accounting transfers. The prioritization must be clear: first, good and accessible basic services for residents must be ensured. The city's operations should not be based on cuts or the sale of shared assets.

1. Municipal income tax on capital income – Tax the rich equally with the average wage earner

Capital income tax in Iceland is the lowest among the Nordic countries, and there is no municipal income tax on individuals' capital income. This results in municipalities missing out on tens of billions annually. If that amount flowed to municipalities, the City of Reykjavík would have received 18 billion in 2023 from the wealthiest individuals in the country, as a large majority of capital income comes from the top decile. It is a matter of basic justice that the wealthiest contribute as much to their local community as ordinary wage earners.

2. Reverse the neoliberal outsourcing and low-wage policy

Reykjavík is the country's largest employer and, as such, bears significant responsibility. We want to reverse the neoliberal outsourcing and low-wage policy and make the city a leading force in the fight against inequality in the labor market. The city must regain control over its own infrastructure and stop basing its operations on low-wage policies and outsourcing, which results in low-wage workers and immigrant labor not enjoying the same rights as city employees and, in many cases, receiving lower wages from private entities providing outsourced services. Outsourcing to private companies goes against the city's inclusion policy and directly promotes segregation and exclusion because these employees are not part of the workplace community of city staff. The city's procurement policy must be revised to counteract this trend.

3. Insource services – let's stop artificial competition that yields nothing

The City of Reykjavík must stop constantly tendering projects that it has the capacity, knowledge, and infrastructure to handle itself. Asphalting and road maintenance are clear examples of projects where the city can easily utilize its own capacity and infrastructure instead of putting projects out to tender, which results in poorer quality and increasing costs. To achieve this goal, the city's contracting and procurement rules must be revised, and the powers granted by the EEA regulatory framework, including the so-called Teckal exemption, must be better utilized, enabling the city to carry out projects in-house or in cooperation with its own public-interest companies. In the past, the city handled many more projects than it does now, and it did so better; we can do it again.

4. Elected representatives should not be highly paid career politicians

City council members are elected to represent residents, not to be highly paid career politicians. The fact is, however, that their salaries are significantly higher than the average wages of Icelanders, especially when additional payments for committee and board memberships are included. We want to abolish additional payments to elected representatives, which amount to 120 million per year, and increase transparency regarding all payments associated with other positions of trust. The same applies to department heads and other senior city managers, whose salaries are determined by the Wage Council, which are not publicly disclosed. We want increased transparency, oversight, and equality in the city's salary policy.

5. Democratic Governance of the City's Subsidiaries

The city's subsidiaries should be subject to clear democratic control by elected representatives. It is unacceptable for companies owned by city residents, such as Veitur, to make major decisions about tariff increases or services without genuine consultation with their owners, i.e., the city and its elected representatives. Tariff increases by publicly owned institutions show that political and democratic oversight of city-owned companies needs to be strengthened. The governance structure of companies jointly managed by the municipalities in the capital area must be based on population size. For example, each municipality gets one representative on the boards of Sorpu bs. and Strætó bs. Thus, the City of Reykjavík has limited influence over the policies of these key institutions, despite its population and financial contributions being many times greater than those of the other municipalities.