It is proposed to give the heads of regions the right to participate in the elections of heads of subsidized municipalities

The Legislative Assembly of the Leningrad Region, on the initiative of Governor Alexander Drozdenko, submitted to the State Duma a bill clarifying the procedure for competitive selection in the election of heads of administrations of rural and urban settlements. Now candidates are selected by a commission, which is formed in half by local deputies and the head of the district. According to the amendments, in subsidized settlements this will be done in equal proportions by local deputies, deputies of the district level and the governor. It is assumed that the participation of the head of the subject in the competitive selection will allow better control of expenses in subsidized municipalities. The expert calls this mechanism a reserve mechanism, since cases of “disobedience” at the settlement level are already exceptional.

The bill involves introducing an additional paragraph into the article of the federal law “On General Principles of the Organization of Local Self-Government”, which regulates the procedure for holding a competition to fill the position of head of local administration. According to the current version of the law, in large entities (municipal districts, municipal and city districts, city districts with intracity division, as well as in the intracity territories of federal cities – Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol), the competition commission is formed on a parity basis by the corresponding representative body and the head subject of the Russian Federation. In urban and rural settlements, as well as in intra-city areas (they exist as independent municipalities only in Chelyabinsk, Samara and Makhachkala), members of the commission are delegated by local deputies and the head of the district (city), that is, in the second case, the governor does not participate in the process.

According to the proposed amendment, if the settlement is subsidized (in the last two financial periods out of three, the volume of subsidies from higher budgets exceeded its own income), then the competition commission should be formed differently. It is proposed to delegate a third of its composition to local deputies, a third to deputies of the corresponding district, and another third to the governor. The explanatory note states that this will allow the head of the subject to “ensure the most efficient use of funds” from the regional budget.

The press service of the Leningrad region government explained the need for reform to Kommersant using the examples of the Shlisselburg urban and Gorbunkovsky rural settlements. Thus, in Shlisselburg, litigation in connection with the bankruptcy of a municipal enterprise led to the fact that the heating season was in jeopardy. And in Gorbunki, the implementation of the “Comfortable Urban Environment” program was disrupted: although the settlement won the federal competition, its administration abandoned the project for developing a public area in the village of Razbegaevo, explaining that it did not have funds for co-financing. After these cases, the region even joined the process of consolidation of municipalities, which is already being implemented in seven other constituent entities of the Northwestern Federal District, the press service added.

Chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the Leningrad Region Sergei Bebenin (United Russia) supported the initiative of Alexander Drozdenko, noting that the innovation will allow better control over the fulfillment of obligations to residents. Communist Party deputy Dmitry Zvonkov told Kommersant that, on the one hand, these amendments will create a mechanism for regulating budget execution, but on the other hand, they will violate the very idea of ​​local self-government: “It is more important at the legislative level to help local administrations increase the revenue side of their budgets.” According to the communist, in Shlisselburg and Gorbunki representatives of opposition parties were elected to local government bodies, “who apparently failed to build constructive interaction with the state authorities.”

Chairman of the Commission of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation on Territorial Development Andrei Maksimov says that the amendments, if adopted, will cover the vast majority of rural and urban settlements, since only a few of them are self-sufficient. At the same time, the mechanism itself, which gives regional authorities an advantage in the competitive selection process, can be considered a safety net, the expert believes. “Practice shows that in the vast majority of cases, even a “half quota” makes it possible to form a corps of completely loyal heads. This is a reserve mechanism for some exceptional cases: if suddenly the settlement is so disloyal that none of the members of the competition commission appointed by the representative body is ready to support the district head. It is also some kind of insurance in case the head of the district himself turns out to be disloyal. But even in cities this is extremely rare, and in the regions it is an exceptional situation,” sums up Mr. Maksimov.

Alexandra Ten, St. Petersburg; Andrey Prah