Mandatory municipal parliamentary amendments: an analysis based on municipalities in the State of Tocantins

Abstract

The constitutional design articulated in 1988 granted the Executive the initiative over budget laws and the Legislature the prerogative to amend them, a balance subsequently reconfigured by successive constitutional reforms that strengthened the mandatory character of parliamentary amendments and consolidated a scenario of legislative dominance over the public allocative process. Replicated by states and municipalities, this movement remains scarcely investigated at the local level, a gap of relevant empirical contours in light of the duty to mandatorily reproduce the federal norms that structure the budgetary cycle, reaffirmed by the case law of the Federal Supreme Court. Against this backdrop, the article investigates the profile of incorporation of mandatory individual amendments into the Organic Laws of the municipalities of the State of Tocantins, assessing their conformity with constitutional parameters. A qualitative approach and hypothetical-deductive reasoning were adopted, through documentary analysis of primary sources (organic and budgetary laws). The results, drawn from the 39 municipalities that incorporated impositivity into their local normative reality reveal the absence of collective amendments, a marked variance in rates, the prevalence of net current revenue as the calculation base, not always accompanied by the definition of its temporal reference, omissions regarding the earmarking for public health actions and services and, above all, the disconnection between the authorization in the Organic Law and the allocation of funds in the 2026 annual budget law, found in 25 of the 39 authorized municipalities, evidencing patterns of normative integration that diverge from the federal framework.