Classified budget

Residents of Brest continue to struggle for a tighter public control over spending funds by governmental agencies.

As charter97.org has learnt, civil activists filed a complaint to the Brest regional executive committee and the regional council about the actions by the city authorities, which in fact ignored the previous colelctive appeal proposing to publish information about the region's funds and spendings on the website of the city executive committee.

According to Ihar Maslouski, one of the initiators of the complaint, the replies from the heads of the city executive committee and the city council say that giving information about the budget estimates and a public discussion of the budget is not provided for by legislative acts. “We think the collective appeal was not considered properly. It is unclear why we cannot discuss an unclassified draft document,” Maslouski said.

He reminded the collective appeal noted that though being public information, the decisions of the local authorities are available for citizens only through proprietary legislation databases Etalon and Consultant Plus. Tax-payers can get access to this information only a paying basis that contradicts the goals of the state, which is supposed to be interested in the knowledge and observance of laws by citizens.

The authors noted in the complaint to the regional executive committee that ignoring public opinions by the governmental bodies violates articles 9 and 14 of the Law on Appeals of Individuals and Legal Entities.