Translated material
Wrestling move
For the first time in Russia, the Legislative Assembly dismissed the head of municipal government
On Friday, June 5, the decision of the meeting of deputies of the city of Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region, to remove mayor Sergei Chernyshev from office will officially come into force. Thus, for the first time in Russia, they took advantage of the new law initiated by Dmitry Medvedev. The law was adopted by the State Duma in April of this year, signed by the president in early May and has already entered into force. It gives local legislators the power to dismiss popularly elected heads of municipalities.Amendments to the law “On the general principles of organizing local self-government in the Russian Federation” were submitted to the State Duma by Dmitry Medvedev. This initiative was aimed at implementing the provisions of the presidential address to the Federal Assembly of November 5 last year. In his message, the head of state said that representative bodies of local self-government should more effectively control the heads of municipalities. Therefore, we need to give them more powers. For example, to grant the right to make decisions on the resignation of the mayor on the initiative of individual deputies or the head of the subject - that is, the initiators of the resignation of the mayor can be both the deputies of the Legislative Assembly of the municipality and the governor of the region where this municipality is located.
The grounds for removing the mayor from his post, according to the presidential amendments, may be “improper performance or failure to perform his duties for three or more months, as well as an unsatisfactory assessment of the activities of the head of education, given by deputies twice based on the results of his annual report.” According to Medvedev's law, parliament must consider the mayor's resignation within one month. A decision is made if at least two-thirds of local deputies vote for it.
Ozersk parliamentarians did not shelve the decision to resign Sergei Chernyshev. Last Monday, 21 out of 22 deputies present at the meeting voted to remove the current mayor from office. The decision will come into force on Friday, after publication in the Ozersky Vestnik newspaper.
The retired mayor himself is now on vacation, from which he planned to return to work only in early August. It is expected that the candidacy of the acting head of the city will be approved at an extraordinary meeting of the meeting of deputies.
At the end of last year, the governor of the Chelyabinsk region, Pyotr Sumin, called on the mayor of Ozersk, Sergei Chernyshev, and the chairman of the city assembly of deputies, Valery Bortsov, to resign. Over the past few years, these two representatives of the city authorities have been in conflict, unable to agree on the management of the city's economy. The situation escalated so much that residents of Ozersk began to take to the streets demanding the resignation of the mayor. However, in January of this year, at a press conference, Mr. Chernyshev announced that he did not intend to go anywhere. His opponent Valery Bortsov also did not leave his post. Moreover, he is likely to become one of the main contenders for the post of mayor of Ozersk.
It was from the chairman of the city meeting that Mr. Chernyshev learned about the impending impeachment. The day before, Mr. Bortsov and a group of deputies met him at the Chelyabinsk airport, where the mayor had flown from Moscow, and read out the agenda for the upcoming fateful meeting. They tried to hand over to the head of Ozersk a draft decision of deputies on his resignation, but Sergei Chernyshev refused to take the papers, got into his official car and drove away.
On Monday, local residents staged a picket in front of the city administration building demanding the resignation of the mayor. At the meeting where the decision was made to resign the mayor, the Vice-Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region Nikolay Ryazanov and the Deputy Chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk Region Anatoly Bragin were present.