Land revolt

The City Duma of Yekaterinburg refuses to link city laws with federal ones

Deputies of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, who gathered after the summer holidays, refused to make changes to the city charter, which the prosecutor’s office has been insisting on for more than four months. Guardians of the law believe that part of the articles of the charter, which establishes municipal ownership of land, contradicts federal law. “Before the adoption of the new Land Code, property as such does not exist at all,” says senior assistant prosecutor Sergei Samoilov. - All land belongs to the state, and it is managed by its executive bodies. This is the principled position of both the regional authorities and the prosecutor’s office.”

However, deputies of the City Duma do not share this position, although they do not dispute the very fact of contradictions between local and state acts. But they are convinced that, on the contrary, it is worth amending the federal legislation and adopting the Land Code, which has been “walking” in the State Duma for almost six years, as soon as possible. Yekaterinburg legislators hoped that their federal colleagues would consider the code in June, but today it is unclear whether they will have time to adopt it this fall.

“But sooner or later the State Duma will adopt the Land Code and the law on state and municipal lands,” Yakov Silin, speaker of the Yekaterinburg Duma, explains his position. “Then the right of municipalities to own land, as permitted in the Constitution, will be formalized. Why, one might ask, change our charter ten times?”

The City Duma intends to defend this position to the end. Yakov Silin even stated that he was ready to take responsibility in court if the prosecutor’s office applied there.

Sergey DIDKOVSKY, Ekaterinburg