Municipality funding law amended
Ljubljana, 12 December - The government endorsed on Thursday amendments to the Financing of Municipalities Act to reduce development gaps and set out criteria to ensure dedicated spending of funding for Roma communities.
Ljubljana
Deputy Prime Minister Matej Arčon addresses a press conference after a cabinet meeting.
Photo: Bor Slana/STA
The amendments earmark additional funds for municipalities to reduce "objective disparities affecting municipalities' revenues and resulting in differences between their revenues and the costs incurred by them in carrying out their statutory tasks," the government said in a press release after its session.
The proposal is a result of October talks between the ministries of finance and public administration and municipalities' organisations.
It has been agreed with the Community of Slovenian Municipalities and the Association of Urban Municipalities of Slovenia, which together represent 195 municipalities, or 92% of all municipalities in the country, the press release reads.
The proposal sets out a new way of calculating the per capita funding municipalities receive straight from the national budget and lays down a legal basis for municipalities to borrow from international development banks to carry out infrastructure projects included in their municipal budgets.
Another solution the changes would provide is to allow municipalities to issue municipal bonds once they have received a green light from the Finance Ministry.
The proposal increases the maximum amount of municipalities' borrowing, and introduce a new procedure in cases where a municipality would be permanently illiquid or over-indebted.
In a bid to make municipality development assessments more objective the government would also like to provide a broader variety of indicators. Development assessments are a key factor in calculating the per capita payments.
They also serve as a basis for allocating funds to municipalities that are home to Roma communities. The proposal aims to make sure that the funds such municipalities receive from the national budget to spend on Roma-related issues would actually be spent on that.
It sets out the criteria on the basis of which the funds would be distributed among these municipalities.
The Public Administration Ministry will present the changes in more detail either tomorrow or at the start of next week, Deputy Prime Minister Matej Arčon, who is in charge of the government's communications policy, told a press conference after the cabinet meeting.