MARIGOT- Senator Louis Constant Fleming said recently his latest modifications to the organic law waiting to be finalised include the abolishment of the five-year residency law issue, the competence on the control and recovery of taxes, and the competence on environment.

 

"Where collection of taxes is concerned I think we have to be realistic in a small community and not expect a local to collect taxes because at some point they are going to find themselves in a conflict of interest," he said.

 

"The Collectivité should sign a contract with a tax collector as is done in the USA and elsewhere. The State (French) collectors have not been worth it. They are spoiled; some of them have been here before we became a Collectivité. At that time whether people paid their taxes or not, the State paid back one-twelfth each month and that's another issue we have to deal with. The other issue is how long can we continue ignoring the fact that everyone has to contribute? We have the competence for taxes so we need to go into a system that is as much as possible indirect.

 

"What is regrettable is that since the Triple R came in, capital gains tax on property that is being sold has been extended from a 30-year ceiling to making it unlimited. That means every St. Martiner who has or wants to sell land has to pay capital gains tax. According to the notary, people are no longer interested in buying anything on the French side. For example there was an elderly lady with no heirs who was obliged to sell her house as she was moving into the Bethany Home, and she had to pay 9,000 euros capital gains tax on the 60,000 euros she got for the house."

 

On the re-writing of the urbanism code, which the Collectivité has the competence for since February 2012, Fleming said there is a bid out for a particular person to do it. He added it was "frightening" that most of the elected body do not have the know-how or the direction to tell this technician what to do.

 

"I'm waiting for the president to say in which direction we are going with this. People are not going to invest if there is no clarity on the issue. The urbanism code should be something simple to encourage people to build and invest, and if you want to revive the construction sector. The French side still has a lot of potential for development. The revision of the Plan Local d'Urbanisme (PLU) I'm told might be ready next year. This is the master zoning plan for St. Martin. The problem is that this is keeping things back."

 

Asked to comment on Overseas Minister Victorin Lurel's statement that the organic law can be revised, Fleming said this was Lurel's "way out" of not making any commitments. He conceded that Lurel's visit was more of a courtesy visit as there were no concrete solutions offered by him.

 

"The organic law at this stage does not need to be revised," Fleming argued. "Revising the law can mean competencies could be taken away whereas modifying means adding to the law. Revising the law isn't going to give St. Martin more funds than what we have already. We need to tackle things on a more independent basis as the Collectivité's hands are tied since the signing of those conventions.

 

"Lurel kept asking about cooperation with the Dutch side but I told him the reality is the Dutch side isn't begging for cooperation with the French side. They are doing very nicely on their own – port, casinos, airport etc., and forty per cent of their business comes from the French side. It is we who have to move on with our own plans and projects."

 

The Senator said he was generally "saddened" by the situation St. Martin finds itself in today.

 

 "We were given a 747, but we're still operating a Twin Otter and we've got no pilot and co-pilot to fly the 747. The president, he or she, needs to get away from this mentality of being so approachable to everyone. They spend too much time dousing fires and sorting out day-to-day problems that no planning is done for the future."

 

He reiterated his view that the Collectivité needs to be run by a real territorial administration with at least 10 to 12 high-level civil servants to carry out the decisions of the Territorial Council, instead of the Councillors themselves executing their own decisions.

 

"Constitutionally and legally, we are out of Guadeloupe, but to me, we are deeper into Guadeloupe than we were before 2007. Guadeloupe has profited more from the new status than we have. You only have to look at Hope Estate and see how many Guadeloupe companies are benefitting. They are benefitting from the profit tax being 22.22 per cent and not 33.33 per cent. And, a lot of high level jobs have gone to Guadeloupeans too."

 

On the question of the financial means, that since day one was never adequately given by the State to run the Collectivité's new competencies, Fleming said the "State can sit on this issue for as long as they like". He described the negative compensation of 634,000 euros that St. Martin has to pay the State every year and which is being contested in court since 2011, as "nonsense."

 

The Citizen's Committee, via a 5,000-signature petition, had also argued that the "dotation global" working out at 688 euros per inhabitant given to St. Martin by France was grossly inadequate, but Lurel dismissed this saying the committee had got its calculations wrong.

 

In his answer to the regional accounting chamber's audit of the Collectivité's first five years, the Senator took issue with the report's conclusion that the Collectivité was "unprepared" for the new status.

 

"The people voted in 2003 and the organic law came out in 2007. So, there were four years to get prepared. It's the government who should have made sure we were ready, just like they are going to give Martinique all the financing and technical assistance. But, we never got this assistance."

 

(The Daily Herald)