Natalya Gorodetskaya
The presidium of the Presidential Council on Developing Local Self-Government met in Lipetsk yesterday. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin acknowledged in his address that "not all problems had been settled during the transition period, namely - the municipal boundary description and municipal property delineation. These affairs are all too often muddled. As a result, the Government has to postpone the deadline for describing and fixing the boundaries of municipal entities and for settling municipal property disputes until January 1, 2012."
On Wednesday, the State Duma passed a Government bill on amending relevant legal acts in the second and third readings to put off municipal boundary description and municipal property delineation until the day Mr Putin specified. These were the most sensitive aspects of the Local Self-Government Law during preparations for its entry into full force, appointed for January 2006, with a transition period through January 2009 and 12 months' postponement for Chechnya and Ingushetia.
The problems with boundary description were mainly technical - land survey was more than municipal budgets could stand. The State Duma would not consent to the repeated requests by city halls for federal target allocations, while municipal entities could not afford the necessary effort. Even greater problems arose with the demand for the new law for realigning or alienating municipal property, except as necessary to cope with municipal and/or federal duties, with a deadline of January 1, 2009. Its implementation would rob municipal economies of markets, trade and public amenities centres, housing, and vacant premises.
The Prime Minister hit the nail on the head as he highlighted those issues. Vyacheslav Timchenko, the head of the State Duma local self-government committee, explained Mr Putin's attention to them for Kommersant: 90% of municipal entities could not meet all demands of the law, so their municipal officers might land in the dock any day as of January 1. Mikhail Vinogradov, the president of the St Petersburg Politics Foundation, regards the prolongation of the transition period as Mr Putin meeting urban authorities halfway. However, he deems it indicative that the Prime Minister "has not specified the federal head's general stance on the municipal reform and on such essential matters as budget relations and fiscal policies".
Natalya Gorodetskaya
