THERE appeared to be peace and harmony among Scottish local government leaders yesterday after a weekend of controversy over plans to bail out a group of councils, headed by Glasgow, which are facing huge council tax increases.
Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar, who attended yesterday's meeting in Glasgow, will now examine a set of proposals costing #24m that will, in effect, continue the current system of ''mismatch funding''.
This was set up with the reorganisation of local government last year to help some authorities cope with huge spending patterns inherited from the former regional councils.
Glasgow City Council, which stands to lose #15m from the ending of the initial three-year scheme of mismatch funding, has been forecasting a council tax rise of up to 30% as well as a #47m cut in service provision.
The proposed scheme, being promoted by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, would mean that council tax payers would not face rises of more than #40 a year because of the current system of grant distribution.
If the Scottish Office endorses the Cosla scheme, Glasgow would benefit along with other councils such as Dundee, Midlothian and Argyll and Bute.
The situation mirrors the ''doomsday scenario'' postulated last year by Midlothian Council which identified an ''underclass'' of nine or 10 authorities facing repeated huge tax increases unless the rest of Scottish local government was able to reach some form of consensus on assistance for these authorities.
Emerging from the meeting with Mr Dewar and Scottish Local Government Minister Malcolm Chisholm, Cosla president Councillor Keith Geddes said the proposals were not about winners and losers, rather it was about the pace at which hard-pressed authorities such as Glasgow lost money.
In his view, the exercise was about bringing stability and common sense to the present grant distribution system which impacted adversely on one third of councils.
Glasgow's Labour leader, Councillor Frank McAveety, denied any interest in annexing prosperous areas such as Eastwood and Bearsden, dismissing any such suggestion as ''a caricature of the debate''.
East Dunbartonshire Council leader Councillor Charles Kennedy said: ''Today's meeting was very useful, and hopefully we will now be able to make good progress and stabilise the situation for local government.''
However, Mr Donald Gorrie, local government spokesman for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, was still hostile to the initiative. He declared: ''The situation is the fault of the Scottish Office and of successive governments - it's up to them to sort it out. They should not make council tax payers in other areas feel they are being taxed more heavily for the benefit of people not in their area.''
Council leaders are meeting the Secretary of State again on Friday for further talks on the local government financial settlement.
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