What did first 9 months of Luhansk city authorities brought to the city dwellers?

Luhansk regional organization “CN OPORA” maintained the monitoring of the activity of Luhansk city major and Luhansk city council since their election to May 2011.

According to the monitoring results, the main analyzed points were the structure of the deputy corpse, the attendance of city council sessions and the participation of the deputies from Luhansk city council in the discussions, along with the level of procedure keeping and the transparency of the local authorities.

The monitoring of attendance for each fraction of Luhansk city council showed that the least disciplined fraction is “Front Zmin” and the most disciplined is “Sylna Ukrayina”.

The most active truants of the sessions of Luhansk city council were Viktoriya Komisarenko from the fraction “Front Zmin” (3 sessions out of 9), Ihor Liski (“Front Zmin”) – 4 sessions out of 9; Serhiy Mikheyev (“Party of Regions”) – 4 sessions out of 9. 26 deputies from the fraction “Sylna Ukrayina” didn’t miss a single session.

From November 2010 to May 2011 Luhansk city council considered 249 issues, among them the humanitarian issues and problems of HPU. But, according to the poll conducted by OPORA among 32 experts, dwellers of Luhansk are worried by the issues of reform in HPU and the development of infrastructure. It proves the fact that the deputies of Luhansk city council consider not all the issues that are timely for city dwellers. Part of the considered issues has political background, e.g. the decision about placing the red banners on the Victory Day in the city buildings, the critics of fighting in Lviv on May, 9. The most burning question for last 6 months was the approval of the general city plan. All the proposals of the civil organizations weren’t accepted by deputies and the delegates from the people weren’t invited to the working out of the project.

Luhansk city council and the executive committee are ready just for talks with public and for the preceptorial help to the civil leaders rather than to common work with them.

The projects of decisions by Luhansk city council are not demonstrated on the city website. Sometimes already made decisions are published on the website. Only in case of public hearings organization (very rarely) the project is spread among the citizens.

The projects of decisions are received only by the deputies of Luhansk city council in 3 days before the consideration. The public access to the drafts as closed. Public discussion of the projects is often maintained after the approval of the decision by the city council.

On May 25^th 2011 the public hearings about the rising of payment for public transport were conducted. They took place in a week after the approval of the decision by the city council. (May, 18, 2011). It is all about the attitudes of authorities to the public hearings as to the formal instrument to legitimize all initiatives of the authorities. The city council really has no wish to consider the public offers.

Low transparency level in the processes of preparing and adopting the decisions in the local self-government bodies of Luhansk and the public control for the execution creates background for manipulations and corruption.

Such a situation occurred because of:

• low level of involvement of the city dwellers to the process of solving the local problems;
• lack of interest of local authorities in active involvement of citizens for solving the local issues;
• absence of mutual coordination of territorial community and local self-government bodies of Luhansk in deciding the key issues for the city.

One of effective ways to solve problems of joining the public to the local decisions and control for their fulfillment is joining of the public to such processes through the self-organizing bodies. But there are several problems needing to be solved:

• The unawareness of activists of local communities about their right to participae in local self-government and the absence of organizational skills;
• Absence of influence mechanism on the local authorities and illusions of consulting with public through the public council of Luhansk executive committee.

As a result, we get ineffective management, growing social conflicts and widely spread forms of public freewill such as strikes and demonstrations while there is still no practice of basic ways of influence for the territorial community on the local issues.

To improve the situation it is crucial to rise the level of consultations with public on the approved decisions.

Luhansk regional organization “CN OPORA” recommends:

1. To make regular public discussions of the draft decisions of Luhansk city council and executive committee with the delegates of the public before the approval on public hearings.
2. Form the consultative body in Luhansk city council with transparent procedures, joining the NGO of Luhansk.
3. Give the possibility to speak to the delegates of civil organizations with results of public expertises.
4. Create the electronic register of the draft decisions of Luhansk city council for the public could learn them and to maintain public expertises of these decisions.