Kudos to MK Pines-Paz for efforts to free the municipalities. Thumbs down to the Treasury.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFpaz-pines 88(photo credit: )
A new bill that would free 60 of the country's most prosperous and well-managed municipalities from the obligation to submit their budgets to the interior minister for approval has the Finance Ministry fuming. The object is to cut through the red tape that interferes with local government and reserve much-needed scrutiny for some 200 failing, bankrupt or near-bankrupt townships and development towns.
The bill's initiator, Knesset Interior Committee Chairman MK Ophir Paz-Pines (Labor), considers it imperative that successful administrations not be subjected to the bureaucratic hassles that are warranted when dealing with chronic municipal basket-cases. Not only would this bill allow thriving cities creative and organizational freedom, it would also allow more attention to be focused on those localities that cannot so much as pay their employees' wages, to say nothing of providing minimal services.
BY TRADITION dating back to the time of the British Mandate and carried forward by the State of Israel, local government is subservient to the central government, relies on it for budgetary allowances and is subject to its regulation and supervision. Hence existing laws stipulate how a municipality must draw up its budget - which must then be ratified by the interior minister, who is empowered to make whatever changes he deems fit.
The Paz-Pines bill, which passed its first reading in the Knesset, wouldn't entirely liberate affluent municipalities from all inspection. A compromise clause obliges them to submit their budgets for rapid review by ministry regional superintendents, who would rule only on whether these budgets were balanced and could be implemented.
The Finance Ministry, for its part, continues to insist on the status quo, demanding that approval by the interior minister remain compulsory in every case - even if the initial speed screening detects no flaws in a municipality's budget. The Pines-Paz bill was backed by the government in first reading, but it must still pass the hurdles of the second and third readings.
It's no less than extraordinary for the Treasury to dig in its heels at this late stage, after the bill has won government endorsement. Its zeal to keep controlling the nation's purse-strings even on the local level isn't just motivated by angst about overspending, but by a knee-jerk reluctance to lose its quasi-imperialist bureaucratic clout by decentralizing.
The upshot is detrimental to the quality of both life and of municipal services. Retaining elected local officials as little more than central government functionaries is not in anyone's interest.
ISRAEL'S LOCAL governments suffer from two contradictory anomalies. At one end of the spectrum are extremely malfunctioning administrations that are in many cases responsible for their own breakdown. They frequently and willfully fail to collect local rates, hampering their effectiveness and triggering vicious cycles of insolvency.
In this category, concomitantly plagued by nepotism and touched by corruption, is much of Israel's Arab sector. Here any bailout without close oversight would be money down the drain.
In these circumstances, wasting time and attention on the other end of the local government spectrum - localities that are well-managed and solvent - is counterproductive in the extreme. This meddlesome bureaucracy creates a disparity between what the populace expects of a directly elected mayor and that mayor's actual, limited independence. Many mayors are less free to run their cities as they see fit than their electorate realizes.
Moreover, the cities are like government subcontractors in numerous spheres - especially education, welfare and some health services. While the Treasury partially reimburses them, municipalities should be able to disburse their own budgetary contributions according to what makes local sense.
For most citizens, the local authority - rather than the central government - is the prime address to which they turn. It mustn't be hobbled in its responsiveness.
Vastly different municipalities cannot all be treated as if they were identical and afflicted by the same malaise. It is reasonable and desirable to decentralize where possible, just as there is an abiding need to tighten the reins on palpably delinquent local authorities.
Kudos to MK Pines-Paz for his efforts. Thumbs down to the Treasury for being so obstructionist.
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