The Province We’d Like (Perhaps Autonomous)

After the provincial vote: a ruling class unable to govern itself, while fifty million euros a year are on the table

Belluno borders Alto Adige to the north, Trentino to the north-west, and Friuli to the east. Three autonomous regions, with their own budgets, their own resources, development models built to measure. Belluno, in the middle, is not one of them. And the provincial elections just concluded suggest that, for now at least, local politics is not ready to close that gap.

What happened in Belluno’s recent provincial elections is not merely a confused political passage. It is the clear sign of bad politics that risks making the territory pay the highest price. The exclusion of Fratelli d’Italia from the Provincial Council, within an already fragmented picture with no clear majority, cannot be dismissed as a simple electoral mishap.

It is the result of fragile agreements, internal calculations, personal ambitions and errors of judgement: a way of managing relations between parties that ends up weakening the Province just when Belluno most needs stability, competence and the capacity to govern. Because what is on the table is no ordinary business.

There are two issues that, if handled well, could change the face of the territory for a generation. If handled badly — or left to drift under a politics preoccupied with itself — they will be an opportunity lost forever.

To understand what is at stake, it is worth taking a step back. And looking at the map.

The context

An ordinary province surrounded by three special ones

The province of Belluno is the only ordinary province in Italy bordering on three sides with special-statute territories: Alto Adige to the north, Trentino to the north-west, Friuli Venezia Giulia to the east. This is not a geographical curiosity: it is the key to understanding why certain comparisons sting so much.

In Trentino, Dolomiti Energia manages publicly owned hydroelectric plants, and the proceeds fund provincial and municipal budgets. Transport is integrated and guaranteed even in the least populated valleys, on the principle of universal service. In Alto Adige, SASA — majority publicly owned — is cited as a model across Europe for modal integration and fare policy. In Friuli, the Region has never given up public control of local transport in mountain areas.

Belluno, in the middle of all this, has handed control of its public transport to a private Lombard fund, and is still waiting to find out what will happen to its hydroelectric plants in 2029. This is not an inevitable fate: it is the result of political choices. Those made in the past, and those that will — or will not — be made in the coming months.

The provincial vote just concluded suggests that Belluno’s politics is in difficulty. A Council without a coherent majority, with the governing national party excluded from local representation, is a Council that will struggle to sit at regional and Roman tables with the bargaining power it needs. And that bargaining power is exactly what is needed for both of the dossiers that follow.

First dossier

Dolomitibus: how you lose control of a public service

The story of Dolomitibus is a long one. The company was born as a public body, went through a first partial privatisation in the 2000s, and reached its definitive turning point in 2021: the sale of a majority stake to Autoguidovie, a private operator of the F2i group based in Milan.

From that moment on, the Province of Belluno has been a minority shareholder in its own house.

Today the debate has reopened on a new and worrying front: the possibility of merging the Belluno transport basin with that of Treviso. Mom, the company that runs transport in the province of Treviso, also counts Autoguidovie among its major shareholders. The question many are asking is simple: who would benefit from this operation?

A mountain territory with low population density is not attractive to a profit-oriented private operator. Peripheral routes, connections to the most isolated villages, timetables adapted to the real lives of those who study or work in the valley are exactly the cost items a private operator has an interest in cutting. Tourist routes — Cortina, the Cadore in summer — pay off, instead. The logic is brutally simple, and a territory without the strength to resist it suffers the consequences.

Those who, in the past, tried to resist this logic understood it early on.

Bringing Dolomitibus back under public control is a proposal now put forward from many sides, across the political spectrum. But a fragmented Provincial Council, without a majority, with internal relations worn down by personal ambitions and electoral calculations, is in the worst possible position to conduct a negotiation of this kind with Autoguidovie. Negotiations are won with institutional cohesion, not fragmentation.

Second dossier

Hydropower: the water of our mountains, the proceeds to someone else

Belluno is one of the Italian provinces with the highest concentration of hydroelectric plants relative to its area and population. Of the 34 large power stations in Veneto, 24 are in the province of Belluno. They produce around 4,500 gigawatt-hours a year.

For decades the proceeds of that production went almost entirely to the major licence-holders: Enel, Edison and others. The territory received the crumbs, in the form of historically undersized fees.

The picture changed in 2022, when the Veneto Regional Council approved a law that, once concessions expire, transfers ownership of the power stations from the State to the Region, at no cost. A result of long legislative groundwork begun in 2019.

“On a par with Trentino” is the destination, not the starting point. Trentino already manages its own power stations through Dolomiti Energia, a publicly owned company. Valle d’Aosta has CVA, 100% owned by the Region and the Municipalities: the proceeds fund public budgets and Aosta Valley families benefit from discounts on their bills. Lombardy and Trentino have already begun reform processes with mixed-company models with a public majority, with shares reserved for the local authorities of the producing territories.

Belluno, which holds 70% of Veneto’s power stations, is at the very beginning of this path. And 2029 is close.

Padrin’s words capture well what is at stake. But there is an unresolved knot: the management model. Once the power stations change hands, who runs them? With what corporate structure? With what share guaranteed to Belluno’s local authorities? What percentage of the proceeds stays in the territory that produces the energy?

These are not technical questions to be settled in an office. They are political choices that require a Province that is cohesive, credible and present at the tables that matter — in Venice as in Rome. A Council that struggles to build a majority within itself will hardly be able to assert its case against far more organised and powerful counterparts.

The territory foots the bill

There is a thread linking the provincial election result to the two dossiers just described. It is not an ideological thread — this is not about who governs under which banner — but a much more concrete one: the capacity of a local authority to do its job, which is to defend the territory’s interests wherever the decisions that matter are made.

A fragmented Provincial Council, born of improvised agreements and lacking recognisable political leadership, is not able to carry forward complex negotiations. Not with Autoguidovie on public transport. Not with the Region and the major licence-holders on hydropower. Not with Rome, where the last legislative moves before 2029 will be played out.

The models that work — from Trento to Bolzano to Aosta — share one characteristic: they were built through long work, often across party lines, around a clearly defined territorial interest and a ruling class capable of sustaining it over time. They did not fall from the sky. Someone wanted them, designed them, and had the stability to bring them about.

Belluno has the natural resources to aspire to something similar. It has the skills. It still has, perhaps, the time. What is less certain, after this vote, is whether it has the ruling class capable of doing it.

And this is a responsibility that does not concern only those who were elected: it also concerns those who chose the candidacies, built the lists, managed the alliances. The result belongs to everyone.

For those who live here, this is not an abstract question. It is the landscape outside the window, and the bus that — perhaps — comes or does not come. It is the energy bill, and the money that does not reach the mountain municipalities. It is the future being decided right now, in a Provincial Council that struggles to find direction.

The province we’d like should know where it’s going. And you only get there together.

This article is a contribution of civic analysis and reflection, without political affiliations. The quotes in the boxes are drawn from documented public statements, with their source indicated. Dolomiti Belluno publishes citizens’ opinions and analyses: the positions expressed do not represent the editorial line of the publication.