A 2026-os költségvetés-elemzésből
2 billion forints labelled simply 'other'. Who decides where it goes?
A 2,000.1 millió Ft appropriation — larger than the entire named operating budget of the same office — is called 'other operating expenditures' and tells neither the legislature nor the public what it funds.
Roughly 910 Ft per full-time taxpayer per year — 2,000.1 millió Ft total — allocated annually at the office's judgement, under a label that names nothing and commits to nothing.
Amit látsz — és amit nem
The seen: an 'other' line that passes through the annual budget vote and appears, formally, as a legitimate appropriation. The unseen: two billion forints whose destination is decided later, by officeholders, without a price signal telling them what the forint is worth in one direction versus another — and without any public or parliamentary record of the choice made.
Ellenvetés
"Every public body needs some flexible operational budget for unexpected costs."
Válasz
A contingency reserve is legitimate — but it gets a name and a cap. A line that is 26% of the office's own-account spending, larger than its entire named operating budget, and labelled only 'other' is not a contingency reserve. It is a pool whose use is decided by whoever holds the office. The phase-out gives the office three years to itemise every forint into named, costed activities — genuine functions get appropriated transparently, the unitemised residue lapses. Whoever wins the next election, the same discretionary pool funds the same kind of undisclosed allocation until that rule is changed.
Share if you think 2 billion forints of your taxes should fund something the budget can actually name.
Az elemző értékelése
NKFI Hivatal — Egyéb működési célú kiadások
Az elemző indoklása jelenleg angol nyelven elérhető; magyar fordítás folyamatban.
Indoklás
This line deserves separate scrutiny precisely because of what its label does not say. "Egyéb működési célú kiadások" — "other operating-purpose expenditures" — is 2,000.1 millió Ft, a sum larger than the office's entire operating budget (1,733.4 millió Ft) and roughly two-thirds the size of its payroll, parked under a heading that describes nothing. A line that funds a defined, nameable activity gets named. A line that is 26% of the office's own-account spending and is called "other" is, on the evidence of its own label, a discretionary pool — the kind of appropriation that exists to be allocated at the holder's judgement during the year rather than against a costed plan fixed in advance. Where the state holds a pool of money whose use is not specified at the point of appropriation, the use is decided later, by officeholders, without a price signal telling them what the marginal forint is worth in one direction versus another; the allocation is subjective, and a subjective allocation of involuntarily-collected revenue is exactly the pattern the framework treats as rent rather than function. The burden of proof runs the other way: a 2,000.1 millió Ft "other" line is presumptively a phase-out unless the office can itemise it into specific, costed, defensible activities — at which point those activities should be appropriated under their own names and classified individually. Until that itemisation exists, the honest treatment is a short phase-out, giving the office three budget cycles either to fold genuinely necessary spending into the named operating line or to let the discretionary residue lapse.
Átállási mechanizmus
Linear three-year phase-out. The office is directed to itemise the line: any component that funds a specific, costed, recurring administrative function migrates into Dologi kiadások under its own description and is appropriated transparently; the unitemised residue declines on a linear glide — 1,333.4 millió Ft in year 1, 666.7 in year 2, zero in year 3. The three-year horizon is not a protected-cohort schedule; it is the time a public body realistically needs to re-base its operating plan and re-appropriate genuine functions transparently, rather than an indefinite tolerance of an unnamed pool. If the itemisation surfaces real functions, the saving is smaller than the headline and the transparency gain is the point; if it does not, the full 2,000.1 millió Ft is recovered.
Érintett csoportok
Recipients of whatever this line currently funds — which, by the nature of the label, cannot be named from the budget data. That is itself the finding. Any genuine counterparty reliance becomes visible only once the line is itemised, and the three-year glide gives time for that.
Szabad Társadalom Intézet
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