A coordinatory meeting, headed by the first deputy Minister of regional development, construction, and housing and communal services, Vyacheslav Negoda, took place in Minregion. The meeting was attended by authorized representatoves of all-Ukrainian associations of local self-government bodies. It was dedicated to improvement of certain disputable provisions of the draft Law of Ukraine “On Voluntary Unification of Territorial Communities” # 4070a, which Verkhovna Rada submitted for the repeated second reading on August 14.

Particular attention is given to the issues regarding the status of an elderman in the local self-government system, his functions and competencies, procedures and terms of his election and service on the post.

While the present version of the draft law provides, that the elderman shall be appointed and perform his duties according to the contract between himself and the village (settlement) council head, Minregion and all-Ukrainian associations of local self-government bodies propose to introduce changes into the draft law, providing that the elderman shall be elected according to the procedure, defined by the council of a united community, and be a member of the committee of this council according to his post, be a local self-government official, perform local self-government functions and responsibilities, according to the Provision on elderman, approved by the decision of the respective united community council.

As a result of the meeting, Minregion addressed the Committee of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for state construction and local self-government, with a request to take into consideration the proposals, agreed upon by Minregion and all-Ukrainian self-governemtn bodies, while preparing the draft Law for repeated second reading.

Note:

The objective of the government’s draft law is to:

• Create pre-conditions for improvement of the system of local self-government bodies on new territorial basis, with ubiquity principle taken into consideration;
• Create legal conditions and develop a procedure for unification of territorial communities of villages, settlements, cities, and providing state support to territorial communities;
• Formation of capable territorial communities, whose main task is to improve the quality of fulfilling of public needs, effectively provide high-quality basic social and administrative services to the public, facilitate more efficient usage of budgetary funds and other resources.

To achieve this goal, the draft Law provides for establishment of the key conditions for unification of territorial communities, the order of its initiation, the order of unified territorial community creation, and activity of local self-government bodies in the unified territorial community until new governmental bodies are formed. Such issues as legal succession, management of communal property objects, formation of budget, forms of governmental support (including financial support), are regulated.

It is important, that the draft law provides democratic procedures for the process of initiation of unification proposals by residents or local self-government bodies as well as making of respecive decisions by them. This also concerns the development of a prospective Plan of unification of territorial communities, which is formed of proposals by village, settlement, city and raion councils; based on these proposals a decision on the Plan approval is made by a respective oblast’ council.