Perm will be made extreme – Kommersant

The Governor of the Perm Territory, Dmitry Makhonin, decided to take away from the authorities of the regional capital and transfer powers in the field of education, traffic, advertising and a number of other key industries to the level of the subject. The government of the region says that in this way officials will solve problems more quickly, but Kommersant’s sources believe that the reason lies in the growing conflict between Mr. Makhonin and the head of Perm, Alexei Demkin.

According to the press service of the Legislative Assembly of the Perm Territory, in the near future the regional parliament will consider two bills by Dmitry Makhonin. The first will allow regional authorities to appoint and dismiss the heads of municipal educational institutions, dispose of land plots, approve the layout of non-stationary retail facilities and outdoor advertising, and also empower them with powers in a number of other sectors of the urban economy. The second project will transfer to the regional level the issues of organizing and monitoring traffic on local roads. The redistribution of powers from the mayor’s office to the government will take place next year and will be financed from the regional budget.

The explanatory note to one of the draft laws states that the centralization of powers “will allow prompt resolution of issues and will contribute to the uniformity of regional policy.” According to Pavel Cherepanov, chairman of the parliamentary committee for infrastructure development, the governor’s initiatives will be submitted to deputies for consideration “in the near future.”

Earlier, the regional authorities had already taken some of the powers from the mayor’s office. In particular, since 2021, the regional government has been dealing with urban planning issues, and since the end of December 2022, cleaning and maintenance of the central streets of Perm.

Dmitry Makhonin’s new initiatives appeared against the background of the aggravation of his relations with the head of Perm, Alexei Demkin.

In April, the mayor reduced the vacant position of his deputy, responsible for managing investment and construction activities and environmental management, for which, according to Kommersant’s sources, the regional authorities lobbied the deputy director of the Investment Development Agency Vladimir Radchenko. In the same month, the governor publicly criticized the city administration, which did not find the funds to install the City of Labor Valor stele in Perm. Finally, on May 22, before the mayor’s annual report on the work of the city administration, director of the Theater of Young Spectators Artem Ageev declared about claims to the work of the mayor’s office and offered to take his institution to the regional level. The governor supported the initiative of Mr. Ageev.

According to a Kommersant source familiar with the situation, projects on the redistribution of powers in favor of the regional authorities may indicate an intensification of the confrontation between the governor and the mayor: “Probably, the goal of these initiatives is to turn Alexei Demkin into a “wedding general.” Kommersant’s source in the administration of the head of the region is less radical in his wording. He explains the redistribution of powers by “insufficient control and lack of initiative on the part of the municipality in regulating significant issues.”

The press service of the Perm administration does not comment on the governor’s initiatives. A source close to the city authorities claims that the plan of the regional authorities is difficult to implement.

“Let’s say the situation with schools. All buildings are municipal. Where are they going to put the schools? The most they can achieve is to appoint school principals on their own.” According to Kommersant, the mayor’s office is waiting for a reaction from the regional prosecutor’s office.

Director of the Center for Strategic Communications, political scientist Sergei Ilyin believes that the governor’s bills show “in whose hands is the real power in the region.” “They are in the logic of increasing the efficiency of management and control over spending. In a purely political sense, the signal is also absolutely transparent: there is a concentration of tools and resources with one control center,” the expert believes.

Political consultant Lyudmila Oznobishina believes that the head of the region seeks to concentrate on the level of the regional government “management of the most important and financially intensive areas of the urban economy.” “There is a continuation of the trend to strengthen the vertical of power. Probably, according to the leadership of the region, this will allow more efficient implementation of management tasks,” the expert adds.

Konstantin Kadochnikov, Perm