Budget Process 2018: Regional Dimension
In none of the regional centers of Ukraine, the budget adoption process for 2018 was organized at the appropriate level and had different disadvantages in its weight. The most critical situation was in Zaporozhye, Cherkasy and Kharkiv.
Such conclusions were reached by experts of the public partnership “For transparent local budgets!”, Which monitored the process of taking local budgets for 2018 in 27 cities of Ukraine, including all regional centers and Kyiv.
Thus, in Zaporizhzhya the terms of the budget for 2018 were violated, there was no public announcement and not published a transcript or audio or video recording of meetings of profile deputy commissions and sessions of city councils, which considered and approved the 2018 budget.
In Cherkasy in addition to the same shortcomings, the timing of budget adoption was also violated. The relevant session of the city council took place only on January 29, 2018.
But, perhaps, the worst situation was in Kharkiv, where, contrary to the clear requirements of the legislation, the draft budget was not published on the city council’s website at all, there is no public access and confirmation that it was discussed at a meeting of the profile deputy commission, the Kharkiv City Buddish sessions where the budget was adopted.
Therefore, according to the results of monitoring, the budget process at the local level has a number of shortcomings: not promulgation of draft decisions on the budget or failure to comply with the time and completeness of publication, failure to comply with the terms of approval of the budget provided for by law, restriction of access of citizens at a session of local councils and the reluctance of bodies.
Regarding other conclusions. Despite the independence of local budgets from the state, and the stated term in Art. The 77 of the Budget Code, as of December 25, Khmelnitsky and Cherkasy still did not have the adopted budgets for 2018, with Khmelnitsky in Khmelnitsky, this seems to be a standard situation, since the 2017 budget in this city was also adopted late.
Despite the clear requirement of the current legislation, which qualifies the budget decisions as a normative legal act and the provision of the provisions on the release 20 working days before the date of consideration for the purpose of adoption, this provision was maintained only 13 cities. In Kyiv, Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr, Zaporozhye, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kramatorsk, Lutsk, Lviv, Poltava, Rivne, Severodonetsk, Ternopil, Chernihiv City Councils published a draft decision in less than 20 days. The draft budget in Kharkiv was not published at all.
The study also evaluated the full publication of the draft budget decision. The analysis of all the published local budgets showed the existence of issues to comply with the requirements of Article 76 of the Budget Code. 12 analyzed budgets found the absence of one or more documents from the list below:
• explanatory note;
• explaining the main spending units to the draft relevant budget (the budget commissions of the respective local council are submitted);
• local budget forecast for the next two budget periods, prepared in accordance with Article 21 of the Budget Code of Ukraine;
• a list of investment programs (projects) for the planned budget period and the next two budget periods;
• Information on the progress of the relevant budget in the current budget period.
The situation with access to transcripts or audio/video records of session meetings, which considered and approved city budgets, has improved somewhat compared to this year’s monitoring. If, last year, not all cities could be obtained even on request, then only 6 cities (Vinnitsa, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporozhye, Ternopil, Kharkiv and Cherkasy) are not published on the site.
It is significant that the possibility of free participation of citizens in the session of the local council is in 23 cities that were covered by monitoring. And only in the Dnieper, Odessa and Kharkiv there is no possibility of unobstructed access of citizens to participation in plenary sessions.
The worst situation is recorded in the part of the authorities of consultations with citizens (“budget hearings”) on the draft decision on the budget after its publication, which is an important practice of involving citizens in the preparation of the main financial document. Thus, in 17 cities, such consultations with citizens were not conducted at all: Kyiv, Dnipro, Zhytomyr, Zaporozhye, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kropyvnytskyi, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Uzhgorod, Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Zdolbuniv, Izmail.
Even worse is the situation with measures that should be confidence in the results of consultations and effective feedback from citizens who participated in the consultations on the draft budget. Unfortunately, the results of the monitoring prove that even if the authority consulted with citizens, the fate of proposals provided by citizens is mostly unknown.
Thus, only 5 cities (Kramatorsk, Sumy, Ternopil, Kherson and Chernivtsi) were published reports on the results of consultations with citizens regarding the draft budget decision. Another 5 cities (Vinnitsa, Lutsk, Severodonetsk and Khmelnitsky, Zdolbunov) were held in a particular consultation format, but reports were not published on their results.
Undoubtedly, such practice cannot contribute to the formation of confidence in consultations by citizens who may consider that their participation is simply manipulated to legitimize the decision. In the end, it undermines the desire of citizens to continue to participate in such consultations.
Over the coming months, public partnership experts for transparent local budgets! They will carry out a full assessment of the level of transparency of all stages of the budget process in all regional centers and form a transparency index of local budgets on the basis of it, which will be presented in the fall of this fall. Also, according to the evaluation, all city councils will be prepared and presented recommendations for increasing the level of transparency of the budget process.
The results of monitoring the process of taking local budgets on2016and2017years.
Public Partnership Press Service “For Transparent Local Budgets!”
Monitoring was carried out by experts of the public partnership “For transparent local budgets!” With the financial support of the International Renaissance Foundation and the International Technical Assistance Project for City Development (Project Project), which is implemented by the Canadian Municipal Federation with the financial support In partnership with the Association of Cities of Ukraine as part of the initiative “Public Budgets from A to Z: Information, Activation and Involvement of Civil Society” with the support of the European Union.
The point of view reflected in this press release is the exceptional responsibility of the authors and may not be widespread with the point of view of the International Renaissance Foundation, the Eastern Europe Foundation, the Project of Promption, the Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Government and the European Union.