Governors plan to exercise the right not to publish income data

The governors of the Russian regions, following the senators and deputies, for the most part refuse to publish income declarations. There are rare exceptions. For example, the official website of the regional government published information about the income of the head of Tuva, Vladislav Khovalyg.

Andrey Nikitin, the governor of the Novgorod region, told Vedomosti that he plans to publish information about his income and property this year, as before. “I consider this information important for citizens. Therefore, as in previous years, I will publish information about income,” he said.

This is the second head of the region who publicly announced his readiness to publish data on his earnings after the signing on December 29, 2022 by President Vladimir Putin of a decree on the specifics of the performance of duties, compliance with restrictions and prohibitions by certain categories of citizens during the military operation.

The first was the governor of the Kamchatka Territory, Vladimir Solodov – on March 27, at an operational meeting in the government of the region, he announced that he would publish a declaration of his income, since he considered this information important for voters. Solodov urged his subordinates to do the same.

The deadline for filing income declarations with governors is April 30. Neither Nikitin nor Solodov have yet published the relevant information, but only announced their readiness to make it public. The press service of the Novgorod governor told Vedomosti that this would happen “before the end of spring.”

The administration of the Vladimir region and the government of the Vologda region told Vedomosti that the governors would not publish information about their earnings in the public domain. Deputy Governor of the Yaroslavl Region Andrei Kolyadin found it difficult to answer whether the head of the region, Mikhail Evraev, would publish a declaration of income, but specified that the governor and all members of the government “handed over all the data in due time.”

Sergei Lezhnev, an adviser to Oryol Region Governor Andrei Klychkov, told Vedomosti that a presidential decree of December 29, 2022 prohibits the publication of information about income “if you went to the special operation zone.” “It’s forbidden, so that’s probably why [губернатор] will not [обнародовать декларацию о доходах]”, – said Lezhnev.

Two more regions – Chukotka and Tomsk region – published information about the refusal to publish this information with reference to the decree.

On December 29, 2022, the President signed a decree on the specifics of the performance of duties, compliance with restrictions and prohibitions by certain categories of citizens during the military operation. conducting, persons “seconded to perform tasks” in the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson region do not provide information about income.

The same decree stipulated that declarations were not published in the media and on the Internet. Whether this applies only to those who are directly involved in hostilities, or to all who are required to provide declarations, the decree does not say. In January, the State Duma adopted an amendment to the law on the status of senators and deputies, according to which information on income should be published in a generalized form. A Vedomosti source in the State Construction Committee said that “generalized information” is how many declarations were submitted, how many were not submitted, etc.

The December 29, 2022 presidential decree does not exempt officials from complying with anti-corruption requirements, and even if they may not provide information about income, anti-corruption measures can still be taken against them, says Nikita Filippov, head of the De Jure Law Office .

The desire of voters to know information about the families and sources of income of governors is normal questions, and not idle curiosity, Konstantin Kostin, head of the Civil Society Development Fund, told Vedomosti. “This is not just a necessity or a kind of payment for public political positioning, this is the ethics of a democratic electoral process and a factor in the growth of the electoral base: when people understand that a politician is not hiding from them, they begin to trust him more,” he explains.

At the same time, according to Kostin, the rapid growth of information technologies and their use for not entirely plausible purposes put society before a choice – democratic and full disclosure of information about a particular public person or “reasonable restriction”. “Such restrictions rightly include personal data, and partly financial information about a person as a tool to counter intruders. Therefore, the issue of declarations is a legal, moral and ethical, and political dilemma,” the political scientist concluded.

According to political scientist Konstantin Kalachev, voters may be suspicious of either too little or too much income for governors. “In the first case, it seems that the governor is hiding something or came to power in order to get rich, in the second case, it is necessary to explain the origin of the money. But in most cases, openness is better than closeness,” he said.

Alexander Sokolov contributed to the preparation of the article