Governor of the Omsk Region Vitaly Khotsenko transfers the regional government to one-year contracts
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The governor of the Omsk region, Vitaly Khotsenko, who took office just a month ago, decided to seriously reform the work of the regional government. He introduced amendments for consideration by the Legislative Assembly, according to which ministers would be transferred to contracts for a period of one year. It is assumed that the reform will increase the efficiency of the Cabinet, but it can also lead to the opposite result, the expert warns.
The bill proposed by Vitaly Khotsenko excludes ministers from the list of members of the regional government. Only the chairman and his deputies, including the first deputy, remain in the Cabinet of Ministers. It is planned to sign a contract with them for the entire term of office of the head of the region. The contract with ministers will be limited to one year.
“The exclusion of ministers from the government will increase the responsibility of deputy chairmen and significantly increase the speed of decision-making,” the governor’s press secretary, Mina Akhverdieva, explained to Kommersant. “In addition, concluding annual contracts with officials will also have a positive impact on the effectiveness of their activities.”
A similar system is not found in Siberia, but, according to Ms. Akhverdieva, it has proven itself well in a number of other regions, for example in the Stavropol Territory. Let us recall that in 2013–2019, Vitaly Khotsenko served as the Stavropol Minister of Energy, Industry and Communications, and worked under the leadership of the regional governor Vladimir Vladimirov even earlier – when he was the first deputy head of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. And Mr. Vladimirov never stood on ceremony with his subordinates. For example, in February 2015, after the arrest of the Minister of Sports, he ordered lie detector tests on all officials, and in 2021, after the arrest of one of his deputies, he completely dissolved the regional government.
Currently, the government of the Omsk region includes Governor Khotsenko himself as Chairman of the Cabinet (according to Mina Akhverdieva, he will continue to combine these posts), his first deputy Dmitry Ushakov, nine “simple” deputies, four of whom are also ministers (labor and social development, education, finance, digital development), as well as 12 more ministers.
Vitaly Khotsenko is not the only governor who has initiated changes in the regional government after the recent election victory. Thus, the head of the Oryol region, Andrei Klychkov, who was elected for a second term, abolished the key position of his first deputy – head of the governor’s administration and chairman of the regional government. Previously, it was occupied by Vadim Sokolov, whom Mr. Klychkov delegated to the Federation Council. Now his powers will be distributed between two officials: one will become deputy governor for internal policy and will also represent Andrei Klychkov in the regional council, and the second will head the governor’s administration and the regional government.
In the Voronezh region, it was also planned to seriously change the structure of the government by introducing a separate post of prime minister. Now it is occupied by Governor Alexander Gusev, who was re-elected for a second term. At the end of August, Mr. Gusev said that the Prime Minister would have one first deputy and six sectoral representatives, and the governor would have two deputies. But in the end, according to the amendments adopted by the Regional Duma, the governor remained the head of government. Now there will be three key positions in the Cabinet: the first deputy chairman – chief of staff of the governor and government, another first deputy chairman of the government and deputy governor for regional policy. Alexander Gusev considers this the right step in the face of additional tasks associated with a special military operation, ensuring the safety of residents and economic sanctions. “The structure has been verticalized,” summed up the head of the region. In general, the changes turned out to be formal: departments were renamed into ministries and two new structures were introduced – the Ministry of Regional Security and the Ministry of Internal Policy.
But the Samara governor Dmitry Azarov, who was also re-elected to a second term, had unexpected difficulties with the reappointment of the prime minister of the regional government. According to Kommersant’s interlocutors, the candidacy of the first vice-governor, Viktor Kudryashov, who held this post, a close associate of Mr. Azarov from his time working in the Samara mayor’s office, was allegedly not approved by the presidential administration. The reason could be the situation surrounding Mr. Kudryashov’s son Yuri: last week the State Duma demanded that the young man be checked for “anti-Russian statements.” It is likely that Viktor Kudryashov will work with the prefix “acting” for some time, since the governor is not limited in the time frame for forming the Cabinet. Mr. Kudryashov Sr. himself does not have information that his candidacy has not been agreed upon, he told Kommersant, refusing to make detailed comments.
Siberian political scientist Alexander Chernyavsky considers the personnel reform of Vitaly Khotsenko to be contradictory. “For governors, fixed-term contracts are a convenient tool for personnel rotation if an official cannot cope with the assigned area of work. On the other hand, it is hardly possible to talk about the strategic development of industries in this scenario if the minister can fall out of power in a year,” the expert notes.
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