by Jon Lackman | 12 September 2006 | Conservation
From Ansa: “A top Italian art historian warned on Monday that a government bid to simplify public administration procedures could threaten the country’s cultural heritage. Salvatore Settis, former director of the Getty Research Institute of Art History in Los Angeles, explained in a front-page article published by the La Repubblica daily that the danger lay with the plan to cut red tape by adopting a ‘silence equals assent’ approach. The term cropped up in a bill unveiled last week by Civil Service Minister Luigi Nicolais which would give local authorities 90 days to reply to authorisation requests from citizens and businesses … He said it could lead to the ‘destruction of archaeological areas, the gutting of a Baroque building, the conversion of a medieval church into a nightclub or the erection of a building on a protected beach’ … he stressed that [local authorities] were chronically understaffed and underfunded and therefore there was little possibility of them being able to assess a building request within the 90-day deadline.”
