Translated material
Power is not shared
It has not yet been possible to introduce local self-government in Russia
On Tuesday, Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Northwestern Federal District Ilya Klebanov, at a meeting with representatives of the executive authorities of the regions of the northwestern region, categorically stated that discussions about postponing the start of local government reform must be stopped. The same opinion is shared by the authorities of two regions in which the reform of local self-government has already begun - the Novosibirsk region and the Stavropol Territory. True, representatives of other Russian regions do not share such optimism. There is no clear position on the timing of the introduction of a new law on local self-government in the Kremlin either. The newspaper Vremya Novostey decided to find out how the reform is going.In a month, the State Duma in the second reading will consider the amendment of United Russia deputy, deputy chairman of the Security Committee Mikhail Grishankov to the law on local self-government, postponing its entry into force from January 1, 2006 to January 1, 2009. According to the text of the amendment, the government does not formally abandon the idea of building local self-government in Russia. It’s just that now she has decided to leave the determination of the deadlines for implementing the law to the regions.
Deputy Grishankov first proposed postponing the entry into force of the law on local self-government until January 1, 2008, allowing regions to postpone it further until 2010, “if on January 1, 2008, a subject of the Russian Federation is not ready to implement the law in full.” But the Duma Committee on Local Self-Government allowed the regions to set deadlines for the transfer of powers to municipal authorities by local laws, setting the final date for the law to come into force as January 1, 2009. In addition, despite the objections of the head of the Central Election Commission, Alexander Veshnyakov, the amendments oblige the regions to hold municipal elections before December 1, 2007.
The head of the relevant State Duma committee, Vladimir Mokry, recently stated that Law 131 “will begin to operate, as envisaged, on January 1, 2006.” It is proposed to introduce a “transition period” during which each subject itself “will be able to implement certain provisions of the law on its territory without haste.” According to the deputy, the experiment in the Stavropol Territory and Novosibirsk Region was a success and even helped to correct the law. For example, the Stavropol region’s proposal regarding the unnecessary division in rural areas at the settlement level of the position of head of the executive and representative branches of government was taken into account.
According to Mr. Mokroy, the procedure for financing municipalities also requires adjustment: localities must have funds to provide the population with heat and water and be able to report on expenses. Moreover, Vladimir Mokry promised that in the near future key revenue sources will be provided to local governments: land tax, personal property tax and 30% income tax.
Nevertheless, even those stages of reform that have already been completed in all regions were accompanied by a huge number of scandals. According to the law, the boundaries and status of municipalities should have already been determined and their charters approved. Deputy head of the municipal formation of Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk region, Anatoly Zabaluev, in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent, said that the issue of distribution of powers between levels of government will be legislatively resolved only in September at a session of the regional council of deputies: “We can, of course, say that reform in the region coming. But, for example, we had municipal boundaries before. At the same time, in our agricultural region there is no provision for municipal management of agriculture. Not everything is clear with the budget - each administrative unit must have its own consolidated budget.”
The main reason for the slowdown in reform in the “experimental” regions is the lack of the necessary legislative framework. The criteria by which land and roads can be divided have not yet been determined, and there is no list of property transferred from the federal and regional levels to the municipal level. In addition, in order to re-register property, money is needed, which is not available in either the municipal or regional budgets. The heads of municipalities identified other problems that the regions will inevitably face - inaccurate distribution of powers, ill-conceived inter-budgetary relations, lack of personnel and insufficient tax base of municipalities.
The Chairman of the Stavropol City Duma, Igor Yeprintsev, also does not support Mr. Mokroy’s optimism. “I would not share the cheerfulness of officials who believe that the reform of local self-government is going well,” he told Vremya Novostei. -- Powers are not financially secured, and even already elected municipal authorities cannot physically perform their functions. They are again forced to turn to government authorities for help. It was necessary to let several regions work out the implementation mechanism to the end, choose an acceptable option, and then launch the reform in all other regions. After all, today there are still debates about how viable the written law is.”
But if the implementation of the law on local self-government is postponed, it will not be better either. The country's legal framework will be torn apart: in two regions, to a greater or lesser extent, self-government has already officially happened. Expert of the Siberia-Forum Foundation Dmitry Puchkin believes that it will take at least ten years to completely reform the system. “The discussion about rescheduling is situational and opportunistic in nature. The plan is simple: end all reforms before the end of the electoral cycle. This creates an unfavorable background for the performers,” a Vremya Novostei political scientist commented on the possibility of repealing the law. “The situation with the regulatory framework, which should be formed at the federal level, will also remain unclear.”
The director of the Stavropol School of Public Policy, Boris Obolenets, worries that “the law will be completely ruined, people will lose trust in it.” In a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent, Mr. Obolenets admitted, however, that he hopes for State Duma deputies: “Even our financial relations have already changed. It’s better to make a decision now, even if it’s not the right one.”
Now the federal government finds itself between two fires. On the one hand, there is a very tangible risk of spoiling the entire political picture before the 2007 elections by starting a very complex reform, much more complex than the same monetization of benefits. Moreover, most municipalities are in favor of forgetting about self-government at least for a while. The heads of the federal subjects are more actively resisting the reform - more than half of the regions have so far successfully managed without local self-government. And now they will have to share both power and money. On the other hand, stopping in the middle of the road, dividing an already uneven country into regions with and without self-government, and also spending money on holding municipal elections, means completely confusing the entire system of governing Russia. A system that is already far from perfect.