Meeting of the Section of Settlements Representative Bodies
On August 14, 2009 in the town of Kusa, Chelyabinsk oblast, there occurred a meeting of the section of the settlements’ representative bodies organized by the Association of rural municipalities and urban settlements with the support of the Association non-commercial organization “For the electors’ rights “Golos” in the form of video teleconferencing with Moscow.
N. Mironova, senior research fellow of the IET laboratory for the problems of municipal development, took part in the panel discussion as a federal expert; the topic of the discussion was “Formation of representative bodies of municipal regions out of the number of heads and deputies of settlements considered on the basis of the situation in Kusa region”. S. Shipov, the director of the Department for the development of the federal relations and local authorities of the Ministry for Regional Development, participated in further work of the section in the regime of the teleconference.
The topic chosen for the discussion is now quite acute in the Chelyabinsk oblast since neither the government of the oblast nor the government of the district supports the initiative of settlements to transfer for the new procedure for formation of the district Deputies Council from the representatives of settlement’s authorities, that is the method of delegation instead of the method of municipal elections, which is envisaged by the current legislation. The office of a public prosecutor also creates obstacles for this procedure. At the same time the representatives of the local community themselves are ready for the new procedure of the formation of district government, which is a very important factor when solving complicated problems of the organization of the community life in rural and urban settlements of Chelyabinsk oblast.