The city is not an aunt

The Kremlin brings mayors closer to the people: now it’s easier to remove them from work

Residents of Orel have not seen their mayor Alexander Kasyanov for a very long time. A year ago, he was accused of failing to pay taxes - long before he was elected mayor of the city. Last summer, Kasyanov took a vacation at his own expense and left. In October, he was put on the wanted list. In February, the governor of Oryol, Yegor Stroev, was fired, and in March, Kasyanov appeared in the Novocheboksarsky city court, claiming that he was innocent. Apparently, he made a mistake in his calculations: he was immediately arrested and is now on trial. Kasyanov still refused to leave the mayors, but this is no longer a problem. Without waiting for the decision of the court, deputies of the City Council will remove it. Previously it was impossible, but now - please.

It so happened that in Russia hundreds of mayors have problems with the law, and the further they go, the more actively they are persecuted. Last year alone, the Prosecutor General's Office opened criminal cases against 248 mayors. The mayors themselves usually nod at politics: they claim that they are persecuted for disloyalty by the governors. Governors usually say it's not about them, it's about the mayors stealing. The Kremlin and the Duma have already tried to meet the governors halfway and give them the opportunity to appoint and remove mayors, but each time they stopped: the Constitution and European documents ratified by Russia guarantee that local self-government is not included in the system of power, and do not allow mayors to be controlled from above.

One more step forward has been taken in the fight against mayors. Last week, a law came into force that allows the governor and city council deputies to raise the issue of the mayor's resignation if he is absent from work for more than three months or spends money incorrectly. President Medvedev said in his address last November that the responsibility of the municipal authorities should be increased. So they did. Now they will bring the mayors closer to the people, they explained in the Duma. What kind of local self-government is this, if the governor can remove the mayor, experts from abroad objected.

IN SEQUENCE

First, the mayor of Arkhangelsk, Alexander Donskoy, announced that he would run for president, then the regional prosecutor's office accused him of forging a diploma, and then Vladimir Putin explained at a press conference that Donskoy had probably quarreled with Governor Nikolai Kiselev. After a video appeared in which a man similar to Kiselev takes money from the table with tweezers, he himself from the governors was sent to the Federation Council.

The mayors of Vladivostok did not develop relationships with law enforcement agencies chronically. Viktor Cherepkov and Vladimir Nikolaev were removed from the mayors by court order, Mayor Yuri Kopylov was given four years probation after he withdrew his candidacy from the repeat elections. Tver Mayor Oleg Lebedev was released on parole last week. Two years ago, the mayor of Stavropol, Dmitry Kuzmin, together with A Just Russia, knocked out United Russia in the elections to the Legislative Assembly and has already set his sights on governors. But very soon, before the elections to the Duma, he was accused of fraud with real estate, he was searched for by Interpol and found last year in Austria.

Shortly before this, the Duma was already preparing to pass a law abolishing the election of mayors of regional capitals, but the Kremlin suddenly turned around and did not support this idea. Meanwhile, in non-capital cities, there were the same problems: mayors quarreled - first with governors, then with prosecutors. Journalists from Rybinsk, Yaroslavl region, were not surprised when Mayor Yevgeny Sdvizhkov was detained in the summer of the year before last while receiving a bribe - he was in a quarrel with Governor Anatoly Lisitsyn. True, they also recalled that Rybinsk was a “gangster city”.

FIELD FOR WORK

The new law is just for cities like Rybinsk, officials explain. “Most likely, the scheme for removing mayors will not be applied in large cities yet,” Stepan Kirichuk, head of the relevant committee of the Federation Council, is sure. “There are fears that there will be a situation for the application of this law in small towns.” The new procedure is such that the final decision to remove the mayor - if there are grounds - is taken by a two-thirds vote of the city council.

Mayors of regional capitals are usually "friends with local deputies," explains Vyacheslav Timchenko, head of the Duma committee on local self-government. One of the deputies cites Khabarovsk as an example: there, in the elections to the city council, Governor Viktor Ishaev was able to get only three people close to him into deputies. And the remaining 29 would not go against the mayor.

But in the cities of the second row there is a large field for work, a source in the Federation Council confirms: Kovrov in the Vladimir region, Mytishchi, Khimki, Odintsovo in the Moscow region, Obninsk near Kaluga, Baltiysk in Kaliningrad, etc. Deputies of the Kovrov City Council, for example, last A week later, a complaint was sent to the Duma that Mayor Irina Tabatskova was distributing city property in her own interests. In medium-sized cities, competition in politics and business is usually higher, there are more small factions in city councils, and it will be more difficult for an elected mayor to build a defense, sums up political scientist Alexander Kynev.

“Misappropriation of budgetary funds is the most likely article to which deputies and the governor will appeal,” says Senator Kirichuk. He himself worked as the mayor of Tyumen for 15 years and sees nothing reprehensible in the new law. Mayor Orel Kasyanov, however, will be removed for a long absence from the workplace. “He has not been at work for a long time,” explains Mikhail Vdovin, deputy of the Orel City Council. “And the governor clearly said: new elections should be held in the fall.” In small and medium-sized cities, the new law will give rise to a new wave of conflicts, Kynev suggests.

STRENGTHEN THE LINK

Previously, the elected head of the city could only be dismissed by a court decision or through a referendum. Wait and wait for the court's decision: "Courts drag on endlessly, but the mayors remain in their place," deputy Timchenko complains. There are also difficulties with the referendum: it is necessary that the turnout be 50% and that half of those who came vote for resignation. This is practically unrealistic: in municipal elections, turnout above 30% is a rarity.

Now it will be easier to shoot mayors. And in large cities, where mayors control city councils, they will still be less willing to go into conflict with Moscow or with the governor. Including in the elections. The main and open goal of the project is to further strengthen control over local governments, to strengthen them as a link in a single executive vertical, says political scientist Kynev. Moreover, United Russia failed the municipal agenda in the elections in March, adds political analyst Rostislav Turovsky. Indeed, United Russia began to lose ground in regional capitals and small towns across the country.

Until June 1, the plenipotentiaries must collect reports from the governors on the state of housing and communal services, roads, budgets in the regional capitals, says a source in the presidential administration, and assess the risks of bankruptcy of municipalities. The plenipotentiaries supposedly should send “objectives” to the mayors of the regional capitals. The plenipotentiaries regularly send reports anyway, object to the plenipotentiary of the Urals district. Yes, but now a separate page in such a report will be devoted to the state of affairs in the capital of the region, says a Kremlin source.

On the one hand, preventive work, routine for times of crisis, on the other hand, the Kremlin will thus conduct an inventory of where there are grounds for pressure. The next elections in October promise to be tense, especially if budgetary famine hits in the regions and the Kremlin and governors need leverage over local self-government. At the same time, the Kremlin is actively introducing party elections at the municipal level, thus integrating local deputies into the party vertical.

There will not be a large number of withdrawals, political scientist Kynev is sure. The Duma says that the Kremlin does not yet have a clear understanding of how the recall technology will be arranged. In March, when Eduard Kachanovsky, a 35-year-old tile and linoleum manufacturer, unexpectedly won the election in Smolensk, the federal leadership issued a warning to Governor Sergei Antufiev. Now local deputies demand to cancel the election results under the pretext that Kachanovsky retained the status of an entrepreneur after being elected. Kachanovsky cannot yet be accused of either a long absence from work or a waste of budget funds.