Problems and Prospects of the Development of Local Government in the Republic of Tatarstan in View of the European Charter of Local Government.

Local self-government in Tatarstan is inseparably connected with the current Tatarstan Constitution. Its whole part (V) is dedicated to local self-government as one of the main signs of the civil society. According to the European Charter of Local Self-Government, the Republic of Tatarstan has stated that the power in the Republic belongs to the people who exercise this power both directly and through the system of state power bodies and local self-government (Article 2 of the Tatarstan Constitution). At the same time  “ Local self-government bodies are not included into the system of state power” (Article 131 of the Tatarstan Constitution). It was in the Constitution that the most important principles of local self-government organization were stated, which were later developed in the Tatarstan Law “On Local Self-Government”, representing the first experience of such legislation in the Russian Federation.

At present there are two models of territorial organization of local self-government in Tatarstan:

1.  Settlements with one-level municipalities formed on the basis of the cities of regional jurisdiction, settlements and rural districts. The historically formed territorial division of rural settlements and town councils of people deputies was taken as the basis of this kind of organization. Considering the fact that lasting traditions prompted the expediency of not dividing the map anew, one had only to introduce new breath into the development of local democracy and to let the citizens be more independent in solving the vital questions;

2.  Settlements within the cities – in large towns of republican jurisdiction.

To understand the essence of the Tatarstan local self-government model it is necessary to remember the real state of things in the country. It was the deepest economic, political and social crisis. Inflation, massive unemployment, dropping of the life level of the population, trouble spots, nonpayment of pensions and wages – these are the most characteristic traits of that time. The democratic processes also exceeded the boundaries mainly because of the lack of experience.

Under these conditions Tatarstan managed to find its own following variant of economic and political reforms:

• soft entry into the market economy with targeted social protection of the population;
• preservation of the single vertical of the state power bodies.

We can say today that this path happened to be justified. Thus, in contradistinction to that of the whole Russia, Tatarstan approach to the reformation of the government system was that it did not start to break the single vertical power of state bodies, but began to develop self-government from the bottom, that is from the primary territorial level. It has been already for more than five years that we have been working out the model of local self-government on the level of villages and settlements. This is how we have maintained the management of the Republic in whole. We were also lucky enough to learn about the political confrontation of city mayors and heads of the regions (Udmurt Republic, Promorskii Kray) only from mass media.

As a result Tatarstan has its firm position among the regions-leaders of the Russian Federation judging from indices defining main characteristics of socio-economic development. Today Tatarstan ranks fourth among the subjects of the Federation by its volume of industrial production.

Headway has also been stated in the social re-arrangement of villages.

The decisions made enabled Tatarstan not only to preserve the rural regions but also made it possible for the agricultural-production complex to reach quantitatively new level.

It is generally known that the local self-government bodies are elected by the citizens of a particular territory and obey only to those who have elected them. The organs of local self-government should not be dependent on the bodies of state power either economically or by any other parameters. It is this type of a self-government body, which we are striving to organize in the Republic. The legislative activity of the Tatarstan State Council is subject to this target.

At present we are working over a new draft of the regulation of the Local Self-Government Council, which will define the list of the local self-government authorities more precisely. The draft law on transition of some state power authorities to the local self-government council is also being developed. The republican program of support of local self-government by the state will have been completed by September this year. The perspective plan of the legislative work of the Tatarstan State Council stipulates a number of law drafts regulating the legal relations of the organs of the direct people’s power.

Besides, Tatarstan has issued a large number of normative legal acts by the Tatarstan President and the Tatarstan Cabinet of Ministers, regulating various questions of establishment and development of local self-government.

The above-mentioned documents regulate different questions of establishment and development of local self-government and stress their role in conducting economic, social and political reforms. However at present the legislative process has slowed down, as the Tatarstan legislation is being brought into line with that of the Russian Federation. In this connection we witness the increase of the number of protests of the prosecution against the legislative acts of the Tatarstan State Council including the acts on provision of local-self-government.

The Tatarstan Republican Council on Local Self-Government was organized with the view of providing interaction of the local bodies of the state power with the local self-government bodies. The process of organization of regional coordination councils on local self-government was completed in 2000. The Coordination Council on Local Self-Government of a region is a consultative organ. Its main task is to work out a strategy of interaction of the state and local self-government bodies, to analyze conceptually the legal and financial-economic strategy, to represent and protect interests of the local self-government bodies in the legislative and executive power organs, to accumulate experience in local self-government.

Having separated the rural authorities, the Republic of Tatarstan has not withdrawn from the solution of local problems.

So the Tatarstan law  “On the Budget System of the Republic of Tatarstan for 2001” recommends Local Councils of People’s Deputies to pass part of the taxes on sales, private property, income, land and rent - which should be entered into the budgets of regions and cities in the amount sufficient to cover the expenses envisaged by local self-government bodies - to the budgets of local self-governments. If the amount of money coming from the above-mentioned sources is lower than minimum social standards and norms, the Local Councils of People’s Deputies are recommended to envisage subsidies and subventions of the local self-government bodies in their budgets.

A Local Self-Government Council also has the right to levy local taxes and duties on the basis of principles defined by the legislation. In this way we are trying to solve the most difficult question – the financial one. Next stage is the conversion of the local self-government bodies into a subject of inter-budgetary relations, and the budget of these subjects will be formed on the basis of social standards and norms.

The elections of the members of the local self-government bodies were held for the second time in April-May 2000. It was for the first time that they were held according to the Tatarstan Law “ On Election of Deputies of Representative Organs and Executives of the Local Self-Government in the Republic of Tatarstan”, which was adopted by the State Council in December 1999.

First bodies of the Republican self-government were elected according to the decisions and recommendations of the Presidium of the State Council. In 2000 it was for the first time that the elections were held independently, were absolutely free and were in line with the above-mentioned law and the temporary regulations of every council of local self-government. Independent district commissions, which held the elections of the local self-government deputies, were organized. The state power bodies only helped those commissions. Besides the Republican Council on Local Self-Government did large organizational work to provide practical help to the local self-government bodies in preparation and holding of the elections. As a result, the electoral activity of the population was very high. Nearly 89 per cent of the total number of voters came to the election districts, and no law violation was registered.

According to the European Charter, local self-government is based on the limitation of the sphere of state power influence by transferring to the place of living of the citizens the range of questions that can be solved at that level.

Political power should interfere only with the range of problems that cannot be solved by the society itself and by its constituent groups. Thus local self-government opposes initiative, independence and relative self-sufficiency in the solution of questions at the local level to rigid relations between a separate person and the state political power. This opposition forms the balance of power in a democratic society, defines the norm of freedom in the state legal space, and regulates norms for its citizens. Out task is to prepare people for such thinking as up to now not many of them understand how local self-government can be separated from the state power.

As it is known, during the Soviet period of our statehood the idea of a single system of Soviets as state power organs was laid as a foundation of our local power. The highest principle of organization and functioning of the system of Soviets is the democratic centralism, which formally accepts independence and initiative of local bodies, but in fact manifests itself in the rigid centralization and the concept of state power. Such notions of  “local self-government” and “municipal law” were practically not used at that period.

Thus local self-government makes one of the constituents of the constitutional system in the Republic of Tatarstan. Its position in the political system of the society is defined by the fact that this level is closer to the population; it is formed and controlled by it. Rationally organized local self-government enables to use the local resources efficiently, to improve the ecological situation, to maintain and develop national and cultural traditions of the peoples living in the Republic and to create new working places. In other words, it makes it possible to ease the social tension, to increase the trust of the population and to provide citizens’ rights and freedoms more completely. Today the citizens themselves start to understand that the solution of a number of vital problems depends not only and not as much from the state, but mostly from themselves. The study of republican, city and regional newspapers gives evidence of that.

At present there are three basic models of territorial organization of local self-government  – administrative-territorial, settlement and mixed.

The problems of the territorial organization of local self-government together with the problems of the division of authorities and financial-economic provision of municipal formations hinder the efficient development of local self-government in the Russian Federation.

The most important of them are:

·   The imperfection of the regulation by the federal legislation of questions of territorial organization of local self-government depending on the type of settlements, owing to which large cities and small rural settlements in fact have equal volume of authorities.

·   The absence of a clear legal regulation of the procedure of taking into consideration the population opinion when forming, joining, reforming and abolishing municipal formations in the federal legislation.

·  The incongruence of the norms of legislation concerning the territorial organization and the financial-economic basis of local self-government of a number of subjects of the Russian Federation with the Russian Constitution and the federal laws;

·  The failure to carry out the requirements of the basic federal law of necessity of division of authorities, property items and income sources among different level of municipal formations by regional laws, and the violation of the principle of inadmissibility of subordination among municipal formations as a result of this.

·  The absence of a clear legal division of authorities and competencies between the bodies of local self-government and those of the state power of the subjects of the Russian Federation.

·  The non-settlement of inter-budgetary relations, aggravating the lack of balance between the functions of local self-government and the real amount of its financial resources.

·  The imperfection of the mechanism of legal protection of the constitutional rights of the citizens to exercise the self-government.

In connection with the continuing exacerbation of the above-mentioned problems, on 16 May 2001 the Federation Council of the Russian Federal Assembly passed the decree on the results of the work of the “round table” on “Problems and Prospects of the Development of Local Self-Government Territorial Foundations” held in Tumen on 25 April 2001. It recommends:

1.  To improve the legal norms concerning the territorial organization of local self-government including the fixation of the range of the municipal formation types by federal law, maintaining the right of the subjects of the Russian Federation to realize this or that model of local self-government territorial organization considering historical, geographical, national and other peculiarities.

2.  To divide the total competence of local self-government into constitutional competence, competence delegated by the state, its own obligatory (stated by the law) competence and its own additional competence executed by a municipal formation proceeding from the amount of available resources.

3.  To define the list of the authorities separately for different types of municipal formations. To give the municipal formations of different levels, sharing the common territory, the right to delegate to each other separate authorities in the order stated by the law.

4.  To introduce into the federal laws the amendments that guarantee the financial right of local self-government to form its own local minimum budget and the equality of municipal formations’ rights in budget-tax relations with the state power organs of the subjects of the Russian Federation.

5.  To recommend the transition to the four-level budget system in the Russian Federation, considering the existence of two levels of local power territorial organization in some subjects of the Russian Federation and to introduce the proper amendments into the Russian Budget Code.

6.  To supplement the federal legislation with the norms providing for guarantees of the citizens’ constitutional rights to exercise the local self-government in urban and rural settlements, also applicable in the cases of illegal abolishing of the municipal formations and the local self-government bodies.

7.  To provide priority support and adoption of the following federal laws:

·   on state municipal social standards;

·   on general principles of granting some state authorities to the local self-government bodies;

·   on the procedure of assignation of the federal property facilities to the municipal ownership;

·   on the introduction of amendments to articles 13-15 of Part one of the Russian Tax Code with the aim of redistributing the taxes and duties in favor of municipal formations;

·   on stating by federal law the shares of the federal taxes with the municipal formations on a permanent basis.

8. To render all possible assistance to development of territorial public self-government as the most important form of self-organization of population, especially in microdistricts of large cities and rural settlements that are non-municipal formations.

One of the necessary conditions of the local self-government functioning is its staff training. The realization of the rights and authorities of the institution of local self-government is possible only under the condition that only competent and legally literate executives pursue this policy into practice locally. It is this executive staff of the local self-government bodies, their ability to implement their decisions and their legal competence that provide for turning the local self-government bodies into the institution of real power of the people.

The Republic of Tatarstan possesses strong material and educative basis in the form of higher educational institutions for organization of the local self-government staff training.

These possibilities are used in full. For example, a specialized department for training the local self-government specialists was opened in Kazan Technological University. There are specialized courses for staff retraining in the Institute of State Service by the President of Tatarstan and the Tatarstan State Council.