The developers of the bill on the status of the capital of Tatarstan forgot about the most important thing

On Tuesday, the draft law “On the status of the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan” was submitted to the State Council Committee of the Republic of Tatarstan for consideration. During the discussion of the bill, it turned out that, having paid special attention to the property relations between Kazan and the state authorities of the republic, the developers forgot to include in the draft an article that would explain what, in fact, the functions of the capital are. Despite this, members of the commission recommended the draft for the first reading at a meeting of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan. The need to adopt a law on the status of the capital of Tatarstan was justified by the presence of the corresponding article of the republican Constitution and the decree of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan on the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of Kazan. According to this decree, issued in 1999, the development of a bill on the status of the capital was entrusted to the Cabinet of Ministers of Tatarstan. 5 years passed, but the State Council of the Republic did not receive the required document from the government (during this time, the coat of arms and flag of Kazan were developed and adopted, although they should have been adopted after, and not before, the adoption of the law on the status of the capital). Last December, deputies of parliament created their own working group to develop a bill in order to pass the law by the beginning of 2006, when local government bodies will be formed and the charters of municipalities will come into force. However, the legislative power of Kazan was not satisfied with these deadlines. At the last session of the Kazan City Council, deputies turned to Tatarstan Speaker Farid Mukhametshin with a request to pass a law on the status of Kazan before celebrating its 1000th anniversary. The deputies motivated this for a variety of reasons, from political and representative to budgetary and financial, and in the end the speaker gave in to their demands, agreeing that Kazan should celebrate the anniversary, and most importantly, the guests of the anniversary, in the legal status of the capital. He promised to pass this law before the end of the current parliamentary session.
Last Tuesday, the draft law “On the status of the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan” was submitted for consideration by members of the Committee on State Construction and Local Self-Government of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan. He was represented by Advisor to the Mayor of Kazan Luiza Kosmylina, who is one of the developers of the project. She told the committee that when preparing the draft, the group studied similar laws on the statuses of Moscow, Yoshkar-Ola, Cheboksary, etc. The draft law defines Kazan as the “political, historical, cultural, educational, scientific, economic and industrial center” of the republic and the location location of the main government bodies of Tatarstan. The other two articles establish the limits of participation of state authorities of the republic and local self-government bodies in vesting the city with the functions of the capital. Thus, government bodies participate in the development of Kazan development programs, ensure the construction and reconstruction of city facilities on the basis of agreements concluded with the Kazan administration, and also make proposals to the local government bodies of Kazan on the general plan of the city. In turn, the local government of Kazan undertakes to provide buildings and land plots to republican and federal authorities, as well as foreign missions in the city. The procedure for granting municipal property into state ownership or lease is regulated in the following articles of the bill. Finally, the bill contains a provision on compensation of costs of the Kazan budget, according to which these costs should be replenished through subventions from the budget of the Republic of Tajikistan.
The financial side of the issue attracted the greatest attention from the committee members. Deputy Flyura Ziyatdinova asked how the issue of cost compensation had been resolved so far. “I haven’t decided at all,” answered Luiza Kosmylina, noting that after the adoption of this law, a subvention item for Kazan will be included in the republic’s budget for 2006 for the first time. United Russia member Gennady Mamontov felt that the powers of state authorities in the bill extend wider than necessary, while local ones, on the contrary, are infringed. Thus, he proposed to supplement the draft law with a clarification that the amount of subventions prescribed in the republican budget should be calculated by the local government body and confirmed by an audit report. “Otherwise there will be, as usual, a tug of war, and the city will be afraid whether they will give it or not,” he explained. Also, according to Mr. Mamontov, republican authorities should not participate in the development of the master plan for Kazan. In turn, deputy Marat Khairullin was most concerned about the fact that the bill did not reflect in any way the status of Kazan “as the capital of all the Tatars of the world.” Luiza Kosmylina admitted that a similar option was considered during the development of the project, but in the end it was decided that such status was, as it were, a priori included in the concept of a “cultural center.”
Only at the end of the discussion, Flyura Ziyatdinova unexpectedly discovered that the project was missing perhaps the most important article - the definition of the metropolitan functions of Kazan (by the way, in similar laws of other cities, which the Tatarstan developers conscientiously familiarized themselves with, there are articles on metropolitan functions). “It is not clear from the project what they actually are,” said Ms. Ziyatdinova, suggesting that if we add an article about the functions of the capital, then everyone will “understand the claims for both land and additional funding for the city.” Luiza Kosmylina, without explaining the reasons for this oversight, promised to correct the situation by the second reading of the bill. The committee recommended the draft in its current form for the first reading at the State Council meeting on April 29.
EKATERINA VOROBYEVA

Kommersant (Kazan) No. 71 from 04/21/2005, p. 12

Kazan was left without functions