Over the past year, local authorities have been busy resolving conflicts, implementing reforms and managing finances.
In 2023, the process of decentralization in Ukraine was marked by both legislative innovations and misunderstandings between central and local authorities due to the introduction of military administrations and the deprivation of military personal income tax from communities.
This year for Ukraine ends against the backdrop of a positive decision by the leaders of European countries and the actual opening of negotiations on accession to the EU. Ukraine continues to move towards completing decentralization, which began back in 2014.
At the same time, a full-scale war and military necessity make adjustments to everyday life, which sometimes makes relations between the center and the regions tense.
What happened to decentralization in 2023? What problems did the communities have? What reforms await Ukraine in the future? The “Honestly” movement analyzed the main events in Ukrainian regional politics over the past year.
Main achievements of decentralization in 2023
Civil service reform in local governments. One of the biggest reform achievements in 2023 was the law on local government service, signed by the president in July.
The law introduced a number of important innovations at once: protection of local government employees and a guaranteed minimum salary, a transparent procedure for competitive selection and career growth, and work based on KPi were introduced.
The law also introduced transparency in awarding bonuses and the obligation to disclose them. In addition, it has become extremely important to distinguish between political positions and the position of an employee in self-government, which will begin to operate from the next term of local councils. The consideration of the bill itself also turned out to be balanced, because while working on it, people’s deputies also took into account the demands of communities, in particular the Association of Ukrainian Cities.
The reform was also positively assessed in Europe. In the report of the European Commission, the new law received a positive assessment, and the Council of Europe called its implementation a step towards harmonization of the civil service in Ukraine.
De-Sovietization of the administrative-territorial structure. In July, the Verkhovna Rada adopted Law No. 8263, which finally removed the Soviet norms for regulating administrative issues in force since 1981. The law establishes clear procedures for classifying settlements into the categories of cities, towns and villages. The term “settlements” will now be applied to former estate partnerships and dacha cooperatives and they will be able to become full-fledged parts of local communities.
However, this law was mainly remembered by the media because of the news about the abolition of urban settlements, which caused bewilderment among the general public.
In fact, the abolition of urban settlements does not in any way affect the communities.
“The President did not cancel anything, but signed the project, which proposes, after more than 30 years of independence, to regulate relations relating to the territorial structure of Ukraine. Urban-type settlements, as a vestige of the Soviet era, are becoming a thing of the past, and this will not have any negative consequences for any of the citizens of Ukraine, who have been living in communities everywhere since 2020,” said one of the authors of the bill, Vitaly Bezgin.
Expansion of de-Russification. This year, changes to the law of Ukraine on geographical names, which was signed by the president in April, began to take effect. In particular, additional prohibitions were introduced regarding names that are associated with or symbolize the Russian Federation, in particular its memorable dates, historical events and figures associated with aggression against Ukraine or other sovereign countries.
The “Honestly” movement wrote how individual people’s deputies tried to block the vote on the decolonization of geographical names in Ukraine, and identified those who “evaporated” during the voting.
In addition, the law obliged local councils to change all geographical names and monuments where there are signs of narratives associated with Russian aggression.
“Local councils have six months to finally eradicate all Russian imperial narratives in the names of geographical features, streets, parks everywhere. In nine months, the baton will be taken over by the heads of the Regional State Administration, that is, the presidential vertical,” wrote the author of the bill, Roman Lozinsky.
The law became an important milestone in the fight against Russian-Soviet influence, the results can already be seen - on December 9, the monument to Shchors was finally demolished in Kyiv.
Interaction between state and local authorities. In December, the Law on Administrative Procedure No. 2073 came into force, thanks to which for the first time the entire set of relations between the executive branch and local governments is regulated at the legislative level.
The changes also affected the interaction of citizens and businesses with authorities; in particular, Ukrainians will be able to participate in administrative proceedings. The concept of “stakeholders” also appears - people whose interests and rights may be violated as a result of a decision made by an administrative body.
In addition, authorities will be required to justify administrative acts, motivate negative decisions and explain to individuals the reasons for making and the procedure for appealing such decisions. The law is European integration, and its adoption brought Ukraine closer to EU standards.
Military administrations, shelters and personal income tax: problems of interaction between local and central authorities.
In addition to certain successes in the legislative field, there were also conflict situations and misunderstandings. Thus, Ukraine met the beginning of the year with a scandal surrounding the case of the mayor of Chernigov, Vladislav Atroshenko, whom the court found guilty and fined UAH 6.8 thousand.
The biggest problem was not the case itself, but the court verdict - the mayor was suspended from office for a year. Following this, on February 7, a military administration was introduced in the city, and... O. Secretary of the City Council Alexander Lomako became mayor. Subsequently, the Verkhovna Rada supported the actual transfer of powers of local self-government to the head of the military administration.
The situation around Chernigov opened a Pandora's box, because the elected mayor and functioning local government were actually removed from governing a large and important city in Ukraine. This resulted in a series of skirmishes between mayors and the central government, and the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, even started talking about the path to authoritarianism.
Such reproaches could have been ignored, but the situation to a certain extent was repeated in other regional centers, in particular in Rivne. The court found the mayor Alexander Tretyak guilty of an administrative corruption offense and suspended him from the post of the mayor for a year.
The mayor of Sumy, Alexander Lysenko, was removed from office in October by decision of the Supreme Anti-corruption Court in the case of accepting a bribe in the amount of more than 2.1 million hryvnia. This decision can be considered justified, but subsequently law enforcement officers came with searches to the Sumy City Council and etc. O. head Yulia Pavlik, after which a military administration was introduced in the city, following the example of Chernigov.
Discussions were caused not so much by the guilt or innocence of city mayors, but by their political affiliation, because all of them are not representatives of the Servant of the People and are not close to the president, which may indicate a certain selectivity of justice. But the biggest destabilizing factor was precisely the military administrations that, after Chernigov, began to be introduced in cities far from the front.
Although military administrations themselves are a necessity in war conditions, their introduction in cities with pro-Ukrainian and effective self-government raises a big question. This situation has arisen due to the lack of clear criteria for the creation of military administrations in populated areas, as well as the opacity of relevant legislative regulation.
Traditionally, there have been disputes between the mayor of the capital, Vitali Klitschko, on the one hand, and the government and the president, on the other. In June, the whole country was rocked by a tragedy in Kyiv, when a woman and her child died because of a closed shelter. This tragedy drew attention to the problem of shelter preparedness and the boundaries of responsibility of central and local authorities, who pointedly shifted responsibility onto each other.
This was also accompanied by scandalous tenders involving the purchase of drums and vegetable cutters for the shelter at inflated prices, which is why Kiev residents went to rallies near the Kyiv City State Administration.
Vladimir Zelensky hintedly accused the local authorities of negligence, and a petition appeared on the president’s website asking to remove Klitschko from the post of head of the Kyiv City State Administration. Despite the threats, the authorities did not take this step even after the introduction of a military administration in the city in February 2022, which, contrary to logic, now exists in parallel with the Kyiv City State Administration.
The conflict between Bankova and Klitschko has been dragging on with varying intensity since 2019, with periodic hints at the removal of the mayor of Kyiv from the post of head of the Kyiv City State Administration. And the situation will remain tense either until new elections, or with the adoption of a balanced law on the capital, the consideration of which in war conditions can hardly be called a priority.
The most painful issue for communities was the case of the war tax on personal income (NDFL). In November, the president signed bill No. 10037, which provides for the redirection of personal income tax to support military personnel from local budgets to the state budget.
Thus, the state budget received an additional UAH 214.7 billion for military spending. At the same time, this also hit local government budgets. And if for the conditional Kyiv the situation can be called tolerable, then for the communities affected by the war, it was the military personal income tax that was almost the only instrument for filling local budgets.
In addition, the mid-year withdrawal of funds also left communities unprepared for the withdrawal of funds, and the Verkhovna Rada ignored a proposal to delay the withdrawal of personal income tax until the beginning of the year. Also, the withdrawal of the entire military personal income tax to the state budget contradicts the principle of the integrity of the budget and tax systems, since the tax on military personnel, from the point of view of legislation, is no different from the income received by representatives of other professions.
What's next?
The year 2023 for Ukraine, despite obvious problems, ultimately ends on a positive note. On December 14, EU leaders decided to begin formal accession negotiations with Ukraine. For successful negotiations, Ukraine will have to fulfill a significant list of demands and normalize state policy regarding local self-government.
In the new year, lawmakers will eventually have to settle the issue of military administrations, continue working to complete decentralization and introduce prefect positions. It is also necessary to regulate the integration of regions deoccupied and affected by Russian aggression.
In this context, Ukraine will eventually have to return to open discussions on urban planning reform, eventually abandoning the scandalous bill No. 5655, which was criticized by the European Commission, the expert community and communities.
But the biggest problem is poor interaction between the government and self-government, and the leading role here should be played by the relevant ministry, for which, unfortunately, after merging with the Ministry of Infrastructure, the topic of decentralization was in the background for a long time.
