CC BY
65
О.А. Петришин
РЕФОРМА МЕСТНОГО САМОУПРАВЛЕНИЯ УКРАИНЫ: ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ КАНАДСКОГО ОПЫТА
Аннотация
В статье исследована проблема, рецепции канадского опыта становления и реформирования системы местного самоуправления. Общей системы управления с целью возможности его использования для дальнейшего развития этих институтов Украины. Проведен краткий анализ возможных элементов для заимствования. Раскрыто текущее состояние системы органов местного самоуправления в Канаде, путей ее финансирования и государственного регулирования, отмечены ключевые проблемы и пути ее развития. Дан ряд предложений относительно реорганизации этого института Украины в контексте муниципальной реформы.
Ключевые слова:
местное самоуправление, муниципальная реформа, модели местного самоуправления
O. Petrishin
BUILDING STRONGER LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IN UKRAINE: CANADIAN EXPERIENCE
Abstract
In this issue main features and ways of development of local government in Canada are presented. Key concepts of local and municipal government in Canada are analyzed, such as structural and geographical organization of local authorities (self-government levels), its reformation timeline, legal basis, impact of the main political parties in Canada etc. Influence of the local self-government political orientation in Ukraine is also discussed. Both positive and negative Canadian experience is used to form a set of propositions for this institution improvement in Ukraine in the context of upcoming governmental and municipal reforms.
Key words:
local self-government in Ukraine, municipal government in Canada, municipal reform, models of local government, political setback
The local self-government improvement process, undergoing in Ukraine, should be based on democratic principles stated in the European charter of local self-government [1]. Thus, the improvement of local selfgovernment system plays a key role in the conduction of the public administration reform in general, which provides the main task of municipal reform - eliminating contradictions and shortcomings that significantly affect the implementation of democratic local self-government.
It is the unique way in which it combines the political and the administrative roles, or the democratic and service agency functions, that characterizes local self-government. A local self-government is a legal entity that allows residents of a defined geographic area to provide services of a common interest. But it is also a democratic institution, administered by an elected council accountable to the residents and to which they have the right to ad-
dress their collective concerns. It is an instrument that residents can potentially use to influence on the level of development in their local community.
In this context, given the relatively high level of the government system and local self-government in Canada, the implementation of its experience is vital for our state. It's importance for Ukraine is significant not only in a theoretical but also in a practical sense, especially taking into consideration particular qualities of local self-government in Canada: 1) its provinces bear its own custom system of local self-government making it suitable for the analysis of it's genesis, development conditions and current characteristics; 2) both the Anglo-Saxon and continental local self-government models are present in Canada; 3) local self-governments play a key role in the actual implementation of democracy at the local level.
A large number of scientific works of Canadian scientists are dedicated to the research on main features of reformation and development of its local self-government, in particular, such scientists as K. Crawford, T. Plunkett, C. R. Tindal, D. Higgins, C. Phillips and many others. However, these questions are still scarcely explored in Ukraine, explaining the importance and overall need of the current study on the outlined issues.
The purpose of this paper is to identify the main features of the organizational basis of local self-governments in Canada and the usage of Canadian experience of municipalities to form a positive impact on the development of relevant institutions in Ukraine. The problem of partial or complete reformation and restructuring of local self-government in Ukraine was discussed during numerous conferences, seminars, roundtables hosted by various research institutions and other non-governmental organizations. As a result numerous propositions were submitted - from more restrained and conservative to a complete plans of system reformation. Unfortunately, these calls and propositions are often left behind and never reach their practical stage.
The disadvantages of the local self-government system in Ukraine are partially similar to those in the system of Canada; however, through historical and governmental development of local self-government in Canada was able to deal with some of them. The main negative features of the existing system in Ukraine are as follows: ineffective legal regulation and legislative consolidation within powers of local self-government, the lack of coverage of local self-government bodies in the media, leading to the loss of dialogue between the community and their representatives, low qualification level of local officials and many other problems. Having a huge list of responsibilities without an equal level of feedback and delegation of required powers diminishes the legal competence of local authorities.
As in Canada, Ukrainian local self-government infrastructure is in need of repair. However, unlike in Ukraine, Federal Government of Canada has provided significant funds to help address the backlog. Likewise, Canadian
local self-government has significant debt, which cramps its flexibility. In Canada, there has been little growth in transfers from the federal and provincial governments over the last four years. Apart from the infrastructure program, governmental transfers in Canada are insignificant and are mainly in the form of payment in lieu of rates for federal property. Canadian municipalities, particularly the bigger cities, play an important role in providing social services and local revenues are insufficient to fund ballooning expenditures on social services, health and housing. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities claims that many municipal governments are on the brink of fiscal unsustainability. In Ukraine, local authorities also suffer from financial difficulties; however, they don't seem to be getting enough financial feedback from the central government. All the reforms, targeted towards better local self-government in Ukraine fail due to the highly centralized, underdeveloped and corrupted governmental transfers funding system.
Possible ways to the improvement of system, structural and functioning basics of local authorities in Ukraine are as follows: 1) there's an urgent need to develop a new overall concept, track and adjust its influence on the whole local governance system, from the low level state government to the local councils and each and every representative in the field; 2) therefore, existing legislation should be reviewed and reconsidered, including the adoption of new versions of existing laws or the addition of more innovative approaches; 3) changing the system of local self-government based on the principle of subsidiarity; 4) the most complete implementation of the European charter of local self-government and other international agreements and etc.
Most of the factors that hinder the development of local selfgovernment in our country have financial or political background. The unstable political situation in Ukraine persisted over the last 10 years. The dissatisfaction brought by the results of 2004 presidential elections followed by the revolutionary events, inauguration of Viktor Yushchenko, creation and the collapse of the coalition resulted in a major throwback in the consideration of the reform of local self-government. Although the end of 2008 was proclaimed by the President as a year of building stronger local self-government authorities, opening wider possibilities for local democracy and its counterparts. To a greater extent it was a blank politically motivated slogan on the way to making more political allies and getting support to hold the power. Despite all the political, administrative and ethnic differences, we can still find new solutions to contemporary problems of local self-government using the Canadian experience.
The Constitution of Canada, consisting of mostly from the Constitutional Acts of 1867 [11] and 1982 [12] does not directly regulate the organization and operation of local self-governments but only states that these issues are regulated by provincial legislation. This approach allows the creation
and functioning of unique local self-government systems in each province, as well as the consideration of the legislation features in a particular area. However, this regulative scheme has its own drawbacks. Important factors, such as density and specific ethnic composition of the province's population, geographical positioning, economic and political situation in the region - are all combined to affect the determination of the structure, the order of formation and functioning of local self-government in each province.
Local self-governments derive their powers and duties from the authorities of the province, thus, they have very limited opportunities in dealing with financial issues (taxation, consumption taxes, etc.) [2]. Although, there were many extents to abuse the legislative formulations, such status has been repeatedly supported by judicial precedents.
The Canadian municipalities remain the most important elements in systems of local self-government. In most places, the municipalities are the only general-purpose governments at the local level and the municipal council is therefore usually the focus of attention in local politics [10]. The council is expected to concern itself with matters of common interest to the community and to represent it in its relations with the outside world. The powers granted to the municipalities under the Municipal Acts of the various provinces reflect this, for municipal councils are the repositories for local selfgovernment functions not assigned to other agencies. The multiplication of special-purpose bodies at the local level itself is testimony to the role of the municipalities. Since these bodies have been formed to relieve the generalpurpose governments of the ostensibly specialized functions that they are ill equipped, as general governments, to perform.
Current structure of local self-government is rather complicated. For instance, in some provinces, there are several levels of local selfgovernment: regional bodies, smaller districts, and management of specific municipalities. There are also special areas of service in some major nonmerged areas. At the municipal level, the Board may take different forms in size from small villages to large, densely populated cities. There are also a large number of special bodies that have a very narrow jurisdiction. For example, in Ontario, there are at least 2,000 of these bodies, including special bodies of law enforcement, public commissions, school boards and other specific formations [15]. While consolidation becomes an increasingly frequent occurrence, there are still about 5000 municipal governments in Canada, and new ones continue to be formed. It is difficult for provincial governments to persuade local communities to take responsibility for their own affairs without organizing municipal councils. Once created, these councils become symbols of local autonomy and are not easily eliminated.
The development of modern transportation infrastructure and the advent of communication technologies in Canada have made people more mo-
bile. They have contributed to removing the barriers created by physical distances between communities. Larger geographical government units can be created without unduly impeding interaction among residents or access to decision-makers. While there is still no consensus on what the optimal size of a municipal government unit should be, it is fair to say that, over time, the threshold has moved upward. As a result, municipal governing structures tend to coincide with larger geographic areas, i.e., they are less local in nature. Unitary (multi-community) regional municipalities are now present in many of Canada's larger metropolitan centers such as Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. Many of today's unitary regional municipalities have evolved from two-tier governance structures that proved too complicated and too costly to operate.
It should be noted that repeated attempts to simplify the system of local self-government, and control of these processes, entitled by some scientists as the "unraveling" were quite effective. For instance, in the province of New Brunswick structure of local self-government has been somewhat simplified, and now has only 103 municipalities, including seven major centers, 27 towns and 69 villages, covering about 60 percent of the population and 20 percent of the province [5].
In Canada, the local self-government bears and important role as a representative of the state in general and as a body that is in control and regulation when it comes to more local and specific problems. Local selfgovernments determine a wide range of issues, including transportation, communication, planning and development areas, recreational and cultural services [6]. The range of issues addressed by these bodies is also widened by a number of commercial services, such as water and sewage systems [5, p. 8]. In the provinces such as Quebec, Ontario and Alberta, the competence of local self-governments is somewhat broader and includes the management and control over the provision of other commercial services such as electricity, telephone services and even gas [13].
There are significant differences in the scale of powers and possibilities of local self-governments to manage social services and the provision of commercial services in various provinces [8]. In New Brunswick, for example, services, such as education, health, justice and social security are controlled directly by the provincial government, while the majority of services, such as police, fire protection, recreation service, water and sanitation, care and maintenance of local roads are a concern to the municipal jurisdiction of [9, p. 150].
It is obvious, that the organization and operation of municipal governments are different from the classic characteristics of the American local selfgovernment model, which is often considered as the basis for local selfgovernment in Canada. Thus, the advantage of powers division method stated above is the ability to regulate in greater detail a large amount of
questions and promptly respond to the current local daily needs. The structural forms and boundaries of local self-government legislation are clearly defined by the Canadian provinces [4, p. 5].
Canadian local self-governments have undergone several dynamic changes during the course of the 1990s. As agents of the provincial governments, municipalities have been forced to endure greater demand for social services despite receiving fewer transfer payments and inheriting greater responsibilities through provincial downloading. In response, municipalities have attempted to maintain the quality of public services by applying business-like principles to government, adopting market mechanisms, and utilizing alternative service delivery.
Provincial state authorities exercise control over local self-governments through laws, regulations and proven basic management principles. All statutory documents and directives adopted by local self-governments are to be approved by provincial state authorities[7, p. 75]. Despite the fact that local self-government regulates a significant proportion of various issues in social and other spheres, practically they are often very limited in their powers, mainly due to the fact that the Constitution does not clearly defines these questions. As a consequence, a number of problems that arise at the local level can not be solved by local authorities directly, because they (the problems) are "rooted" at the national level and should be resolved by the federal government in the first place.
Nevertheless, it should be stated that there has been a noticeable strengthening of decentralization and redistribution of powers (as delegated) from central government to local self-governments over the past five years. This situation lays a positive impact on the development of appropriate authorities, because national funding covers a fewer part of the costs of municipalities. Therefore, granting local self-governments the ability to control a wide range of social services, allows monetization and opens new revenue sources for the further development of municipalities. This is a very important consideration, given the fact that all operations run through taxation authorities of the province, leaving local self-governments in a difficult and dependent on the state position. As an interesting choice, in Australia, similar problems have been effectively resolved by issuing multiple grants from the government for various development programs of municipalities. Also, last changes in local self-government system of Belgium, for example, consisted mostly of a multimillion (about 17 million Euros) grant program.
Moving away from financial and legislative issues of local selfgovernment in Canada, the complications of its political status should be also addressed. In contrast with the political party systems of many nations, Canadian parties at the federal level are often only loosely connected with parties at the provincial level, despite having similar names. However, there are
exceptions, like the New Democratic Party, which is organizationally integrated with most of its provincial counterparts including a shared membership. In general, the influence of political parties on the work of local selfgovernment is uneven. For example, municipal political parties emerged in Montreal in the 1950s. They have completely dominated municipal politics and elections ever since. The council is organized along partisan lines, complete with the "government" party, led by the mayor, to the right of the council chair, and the "opposition" party to the left. Since 1978, party names have appeared on municipal ballots and public funds have been used to subsidize the electoral expenditures of municipal parties that receive a specified share of the vote. On the other hand, in some provinces, mostly consisting of aboriginal population and being described as less important to the state, municipal government is significantly less politicized, and even if it is still represented from federal level political parties, the link between the federal and local levels is lost. Thereby, despite the fact that the involvement of political parties in local self-government is a common worldwide practice, allowing parties to participate in municipal government and acknowledge the link between local and national government in Canada this is still concerned as a debatable issue.
Summing up, the priorities of Canadian Municipalities are, as follows: 1) the recognition and legislative approval of new cooperation principles between the levels of government; 2) the consolidation of innovative taxation possibilities and other new ways of revenue for local bodies; 3) an active search for new organizational forms of local self-government, which would combine elements of the three key forms - "strong mayor-council" relation, "council-manager" and the "commission" form; 4) a strong commitment to provide citizens with equal possibilities of accessing a minimum standard for public services, regardless of the financial reserves of the area in which it resides (provincial "programs of Equal Opportunities") [3]; 5) and finally promoting the development of inter-municipal community associations to ensure participation of citizens in governance, representation of interests in municipal structures etc.
In conclusion, we should note that the main issue of local selfgovernment in Canada is still in the unclear constitutional regulation and the division of powers between different levels of government (including provincial governments and local self-governments), which in turn leads to a number of problems, such as lack of funding, complication and dependency of local authorities and provincial bodies as well as problems of determining their jurisdiction. These problems are almost identical with those that exist in Ukraine, stating a strong argument for the implementation of Canadian experience towards the creation of effective and sustainable, as well as a national oriented local self-government in Ukraine.
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