Financial sustainability and the provision of public: an analysis of small brazilian municipalities

Abstract In 2019, the Federal Government sent to the Senate the proposal for Amendment to the Constitution No. 188/2019, called PEC of the Federative Pact. Among other measures, the PEC proposes to include a device that obliges municipalities with up to five thousand inhabitants to prove their "financial sustainability", defined as having at least 10% of the revenue total from municipal taxes. This work seeks to assess the municipal level of effectiveness in providing public services and the real need that justifies this proposed amendment, having the small Brazilian municipalities considered of low financial sustainability according to the criteria established by PEC 188/2019 as the universe of analysis. In contrast to the purely demographic and/or tax assessment, three indicators of typically municipal services were analyzed: social assistance, health coverage and school attendance. The three indicators were indexed into groups with Service Quality Index (SQI) for each one. The results show that the public service indicators in municipalities with up to 5,000 inhabitants have similar or, in many cases, even higher performance than the Brazilian municipalities average. The evidence presented allows us to question the validity of the criterion proposed by the PEC, considering that the supposed efficiency and effectiveness in municipal public management is not an exclusive result of the supposed financial sustainability. In conclusion, it seems to be another form of political control manifestation over federative entities.