| Officials are trying to define borders in Moscow It seems that the Moscow authorities cannot escape from starting to share city land with the Russian authorities. In January, the federal law “On the delimitation of state ownership of land” came into force. In pursuance of this law, according to the Vremya Novostei newspaper, a conciliation commission made up of officials from the Federal Ministry of Property and the Moscow government has been working day and night since the beginning of January. Local battles to determine the borders of, relatively speaking, federal territories inside Moscow are accompanied by disputes among lawyers about the need to replace the old federal law “On the status of the capital of the Russian Federation.” According to Moscow City Duma deputy Mikhail Moskvin-Tarkhanov, more than 80% of Moscow’s real estate is under the control of the mayor’s office. The federal government, the deputy believes, claims approximately half of the territory within the Garden Ring and a third in other places in the capital. At the same time, according to the Land Code, Losiny Ostrov National Park is already federal, and according to the Water Code, the coastal zone of the Moscow River within 200 meters should also be classified as federal property.
Interest in the redistribution of property is explained by the considerable amount of money that is being circulated in the capital's real estate market. According to official data, in 2001, 5.6 billion rubles were received from Moscow land management. (almost $187 million), or 40% of the income of the entire property and land complex of the capital. And according to various expert estimates, the annual turnover of the entire Moscow real estate market ranges from 4 to 7.5 billion dollars.
At yesterday's press conference, the debate on this topic was resumed by the Chairman of the Moscow City Duma, Vladimir Platonov, and the chief researcher at the Institute of Urban Planning of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences, Yuri Bocharov. The Chairman of the City Duma argues that the current law (dated April 15, 1993) should be implemented, according to which it is the executive power of the subject of the Federation that provides the federal center with land and property to exercise its powers. And in addition, to account for the performance of capital functions by the city, the Moscow budget must receive subsidies from the federal budget. According to Mr. Platonov, this year the federal center’s expenses are set at 11 billion rubles, of which, in his own words, “God grant we get 3-5 billion.” In past years, no more than 10% was compensated to Moscow from the federal budget under the heading “metropolitan functions”.
Yuri Bocharov believes that the law, which the Chairman of the Moscow City Duma is enforcing, contradicts the Constitution adopted at the end of 1993. The fact is that the Basic Law of the State in Article 70 actually prescribes the development of a new law “On the status of the capital of the Russian Federation,” which the federal government will never get around to. In addition, according to Mr. Bocharov, neither the concept of “metropolitan functions” nor, consequently, their list are spelled out in any law, and therefore the calculations of who owes whom and how much are not justified. “And all the time, since the change of federal power, it has been forced to beg Moscow for buildings and land,” says the academician.
However, the word “begs” is hardly applicable to the current stage of relations between the federal center and the Moscow authorities. Judging by the words of the Vremya Novostey newspaper source in the Ministry of Property, officials of the Moscow and federal governments within the framework of the conciliation commission do not leave the negotiating table on the principles of delimitation of expensive capital land. It was not possible to obtain an official comment from this department on the topic of capital functions yesterday. But an official from another federal department - Gosstroy - on condition of anonymity, said that the main thing is the boundaries of federal zones in Moscow, and their establishment is possible only on the basis of the general development plan for Moscow. But the Russian government has not approved it for several years now for the reason that there is no chapter on federal zones. Vladislav DOLGOV |
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