Dnipro City Council plans to approve a new regulation on the consideration of public initiatives. TI Ukraine identified a number of risks in it that make it difficult to engage the community in decision-making.
The regulation on the procedure for submitting and considering a local initiative covers a number of issues that may significantly delay or completely freeze the opportunities for residents of Dnipro to submit public initiatives and participate in their consideration. Thus, the document defines an excessive number of persons who must be included in the initiative group (from 250), participate in offline voting (from 125), as well as a complicated procedure for submitting and approving such a proposal.
That is why the Transparent Cities program of TI Ukraine calls on the Dnipro City Council to postpone the approval of this Regulation and finalize it, considering the interests of the community.
We believe that the updated version of the document must take into account the following recommendations.
- Reduce the number of members of the initiative group from 250 to 10 and simplify the launch of the procedure. There is no reasonable need to engage an excessive number of citizens at the preparation stage. Instead of collecting personal signatures under the notification of the intention to introduce the initiative (125+ people), it will suffice to inform the city council about the start of signature collection in support of the initiative. Examples of Lviv, Khmelnytskyi, Zviahel.
- Transform the requirements for supporting such initiatives. To date, the draft regulation refers to 250 signatories, who must personally attend the meeting and unanimously support the initiative. Therefore, it is necessary to provide for the possibility to collect signatures without holding a meeting or do it online. Given the population in Dnipro, 700-800 signatures provided in electronic form should suffice. An example of Kyiv.
- Amend the charter of the territorial community of the city to harmonize regulatory acts and protect against further risky changes in the field. To date, the Charter has a rule that initiative groups formed from members of a territorial community of at least 250 people can present a local initiative.
- Provide an opportunity for the authors of the initiative to interact with council member commissions and speak during the consideration of issues at the meeting of the city council. The Procedure does not mention a direct opportunity for the authors of the initiative to speak during the consideration of the issue at the meeting of the council, so this should be explicitly provided for in the document. It is also necessary to ensure the consideration of public initiatives with the reports by their initiators in standing parliamentary commissions. This will help enhance the voice of experts, increase the transparency of the process, and boost the chances of adopting initiatives. Example of Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Vasylkiv.
- The city council needs to prepare forms and templates for documents, as well as organize quality consultations during the preparation and finalization of the draft decision. In this way, citizens will be able to provide high-quality documents and implement the changes necessary for society. An example of Kyiv.
A local initiative is a form of community participation in solving issues at the level of local self-government. Such an opportunity for the community to participate in decision-making is provided for in the Law on Local Self-Government in Ukraine, and therefore it requires quality development not only by Dnipro, but also by other Ukrainian cities.
Therefore, we call on the members of the Dnipro City Council to finalize the document, since the proposed mechanism looks like an attempt to artificially block the use of local democracy tools.
We call on the members of the Dnipro City Council to finalize the document, since the proposed mechanism looks like an attempt to artificially block the use of local democracy tools.
