Former, current and candidates for municipal councilors, as well as several active citizens, participated in a meeting in Burgas on the topic “How can local authorities be more transparent and open to their citizens?”.
It was organized by the non-governmental organization The Anticorruption Fund, and Burgas is the 13th Bulgarian city in which it takes place. The discussion was led by the director of the Anti-Corruption Fund Boyko Stankushev, the legal expert Sofia Zheleva and the coordinator of the legal program Lora Georgieva-Mateeva.
The team of the Anti-Corruption Fund presented the „Standard for Accountability and Integrity of Local Government“ developed by it and the Manual for its implementation. In it, the indicators are arranged by topic, by which citizens can find out whether the good practice for transparency, accountability and integrity of the local government has been observed.
Lora Georgieva-Mateeva listed the main problems they face when visiting Bulgarian municipalities, among which are the lack of transparency, lack of communication with citizens and of course – corruption.
“In many places, the mayors do not have a reception day, the website of the Municipality is not complete and important information cannot be found there, public discussions are not held, and the Municipal Councils hold sessions without discussions, which are not even broadcast online. Thus, citizens really have no idea how their funds and property are managed.”
She added that a major problem is that people rarely understand that there is a public discussion on an important topic at all, and when they attend one, they are not always able to ask their questions.
“Problems must be solved in a way that more adequately meets the needs of society, and not ready-made solutions from above.”
According to Lora Georgieva-Mateeva, very often municipal enterprises also work without sufficient publicity, they do not publish the information required by law, and they hire people for management positions not based on the criteria of training, education and expertise, but on the basis of personal contacts and connections. For this reason, people often lose trust in institutions and don’t even bother to seek them out when they have problems.
“If the administration is not at the service of the citizens, there is no point in its existence.”
At the end of the presentation, the floor was given to the guests present, most of whom were candidates for mayors and municipal councilors, as well as several active citizens. Due to the active election campaign we are currently in, we will not mention them by name.
The majority of them stated that many of the above-mentioned problems also occur in the Municipality of Burgas. The topic of holding public discussions was touched upon, specifically the annual budget, which is an extremely important topic for all citizens. According to those present in Burgas, this is not done in the necessary order, since people are not given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the entire draft budget in advance and, accordingly, to ask adequate questions at the discussion itself, which in the end is conducted only on the record.
Citizens also complained about the order of holding public discussions, who pointed out that they often learn about the event at the last minute, and when they go to the place, they are rudely interrupted by representatives of the local authority, who explain to them that they do not understand the matter well enough. At the same time, many of the online signals sent to the Municipality regarding current problems in the city remained unanswered.
A candidate for municipal councilor from the ruling party, for his part, reminded that in the Municipality of Burgas there is an Ordinance for organizing and holding public discussions, which is his work and thanks to it, the consultation process between the local government and the public has been significantly facilitated.
Another major problem for Burgas, which was highlighted at the meeting, was the submission of extraordinary reports with a huge volume to the Municipal Council-Burgas hours before the meeting. In this way, the councilors are not given the opportunity to get to know the documents well enough, although they are expected to vote „for“ or „against“ the respective decision.
On the topic, an example was given with the scandalous report on „Rosenets“, which was included as an extraordinary one. According to those who spoke at the meeting, a large number of councilors in the local parliament very often vote for reports that they have not read in advance, just because they were submitted by their party. The same applies to opposition proposals, which are almost always rejected without argument.
A former municipal councilor also raised the issue with the media in the city, which provide peace and comfort to the Municipality of Burgas, as they are bound by solid advertising contracts, which they are afraid of losing if they allow themselves to criticize the local government in any way.
For their part, the Anti-Corruption Fund stated that today they will hold a meeting with the local administration, at which they will raise all the above-mentioned problems.
