Our new research points to a number of problems that stand in the way of effective control of municipal budgets by local parliaments. In cooperation with our partners from the Center for Civic Education, we prepared a study „The role of the local parliaments in the fight against corruption“, which explains the current state of affairs and provides directions for the strengthening of its role. to the fact that the current, and that the possible role of councilors fighting corruption.
The publication has paid special attention to the process of adopting the local budget and character of the debate on the annual accounts of the city council, in which we pointed out the limitations and problems in this part of their work.
In short, we conclude that there are shortcomings in the legal framework, poor practices, lack of initiative and poor performance of local MPs, which together make up that budget monitoring is weak and ineffective.
As things currently stand, the local MPs have significant competencies, but lack influence when it comes to control of local budgets.
Some of the obstacles to the effective oversight of the budget are:
- short deadlines for the consideration of the budget,
- status of local MPs, with their position not being professionalized,
- lack of capacities for budget analysis,
- lack of interest in using the information provided by state audit,
- lack of connection between local parliaments and the internal audit,
numerous problems in the way that the commercial audit of the final accounts is done.
In this publication, you can read more about each of these issues, as well as the position of local MPs, conflict of interest, relation with the local executive branch (Mayor), the adoption of planning documents and opportunities for citizen participation in decision-making at the local level.
The publication was prepared within the project “Corruption at the local level – Zero Tolerance”, conducted by the Centre for Civic Education (CCE), in cooperation with the Institute Alternative, with the support of the European Union through the EU Delegation to Montenegro IPA 2011 and the Norwegian Royal Embassy.
