The caste of the Board: 31 "honorary" councilors that cost a fortune to Montevideo

The Constitution states that they do not get paid. Reality tells a different story: million-dollar allocations, handpicked advisors, fuel, tickets, and exemptions paid for by a taxpayer who is never asked anything.

In Uruguay, there is a word that politics uses as a pretext: honorarium. It sounds like vocation, like selfless service, like a citizen who donates their time to the community. In the Montevideo Departmental Board, it means something very different: a position without a formal salary, surrounded by a system of privileges that no ordinary worker could dream of.

Article 295 of the Constitution establishes that councilors do not get paid. In 1994, Uruguayans rejected at the polls a reform that, among other things, allowed them to be paid. The message was clear. The elite still found a way to circumvent it.

A payroll paid by the neighbor

Each of the 31 councilors receives around $262,000 every month to hire up to five secretaries. Do the math: that’s over $8 million a month and nearly $97 million a year, just in this allocation. All of it comes from the pocket of the same Montevidean who pays one of the highest taxes in the country and receives in return broken streets, overflowing garbage, and a transportation system that doesn’t work.

What’s the oversight? Presenting a pay stub. Nothing more. No one verifies what those advisors do, how many hours they work, or if part of that money goes back to the political sector that placed them there. The councilors themselves admit it. Some acknowledge that a good part of their "secretaries" were imposed by their sector and that they work for the party, not for the Board. In other words, activism funded by taxes.

Nine per head

And five is not enough. Each councilor can add up to four public officials on a commission transfer, who continue to receive their salary from their original agency: an employee from ASSE, the Municipality, or another entity that leaves their job to serve a councilor. Nine people per councilor. A councilor from the Republican Coalition said it bluntly: "in reality, there are some who do nothing." He also admitted that two of his transfers were political favors.

The scandal erupted when an advisor paid with this allocation was convicted of money laundering. The councilor for whom he worked is not under indictment. But the case revealed what no one wanted to see: the system is so opaque that it is not even clear who chose that advisor.

Fuel, tickets, and zero vehicle tax

The payroll also includes in-kind benefits. Vouchers from Ancap for up to 250 liters of fuel per month and up to 720 monthly bus tickets, distributed among 15 ticket offices. The Montevidean who takes two buses to go to work pays for each ticket; the councilor distributes 720. And on top of that, they don’t pay vehicle tax on their car.

When a group of councilors from the National Party proposed last year to eliminate at least the benefit of the tickets, the initiative died in silence. No one in the Board wanted to give up anything.

The State that serves itself

None of this is free. There is no such thing as public money: there is taxpayer money, taken forcibly from their salaries and businesses. Each fuel voucher, each ticket office, and each advisor who "does nothing" is money taken from a family in Piedras Blancas or a shopkeeper in La Unión.

While Montevideo degrades year after year, its departmental political class has shielded its privileges behind the word "honorarium." It is not public service. It is a State that first serves itself and then, if there is anything left over, attends to the citizen.

The solution does not require studies or commissions: fewer advisors, real task oversight, an end to free tickets and fuel, and a monthly publication, councilor by councilor, of who is paid and for what. What is lacking is not money. It is the will to touch their own privileges.