Legislation must allow local administration to become autonomous and consolidate its financial independence – Experts

The Law on administrative decentralization and Law on local public administration must include provisions that would allow the local administration become more autonomous and its financial autonomy stronger, director of Business Consulting Institute, Mihai Roscovan, said during the debates organized Monday November 13 by the Coalition for fiscal decentralization, on the approval of the two laws by the Parliament. According to Roscovan, the drafts of these two laws approved in July currently in first reading, improved the legal framework of the local public administration related to the decentralization of the local public authorities’ competences. Still, according to him, the draft laws do not clearly delimit competences between different levels of the local public administration. At the same time, they should stipulate more financial resources for the local authorities, in order to be able to fulfill their functions at local level. “We can not exactly say what percentage from the accumulations should be transferred to the state and how much should remain for the local authorities, but in case certain competences are delegated to them, then in the settlement’s budget there should be envisaged enough money in this regard”, Roscovan said, mentioning that, in case the regional economic situation does not enable to accumulate the necessary financial resources, they should be covered by the central or second level administration. In Roscovan’s opinion, the implementation of these laws will be likely by 2008. The notifications of the two draft laws show that the Coalition for fiscal decentralization has formulated some objections, including the fact that in the law it must be clearly exposed the concept and essence of the notion of own incomes of the administrative-territorial unit and the state policy regarding their quote increase (for example not less than 70% in the local incomes at both levels). The financial transfers must be of general and foreseeable nature and not create the APL’s dependence on the structures of the central public authorities, while the local authorities must have full rights to set the priorities of the expenses and their carrying out, quoted sources inform. The Coalition finds also that many aspects of the law are inexplicitly formulated, and the mechanisms for implementation proposed in the draft are not clear and do not stipulate concrete proposals in this respect. According to the experts, the impact of the decentralization will generate the development of the democracy, inclusively by involving citizens in the decisional process at level of community and rationalizing the allotment of resources in economy. The need to extend and consolidate the local autonomy is envisaged in the Government’s plans of actions, including the Moldova-European Union Plan of actions.