Budget decisions not made public by 11 local councils of Kherson region

In the Kherson region, only some councils publicly disclose their budget documents. Others either show them partially or make access to information difficult and non-transparent for residents.

The analysis of the Center for Public Investigations showed that the level of openness of the budget process in Kherson Oblast communities varies greatly - from transparent examples to a complete lack of access to decisions.

The law stipulates that local councils must approve budget decisions and make them available to citizens. The information should be open and published in a format that is easy to analyze. The introduction of military administrations in all communities of the region does not cancel these requirements.

Even within the same region, the usability and accessibility of community websites varies greatly. Some councils do their best to make it easy for people to find the documents they need, while others make it difficult to find them to the point of a real labyrinth.

The monitoring showed that out of 58 local budgets in the region, only 5 are fully open. Another 39 communities publish both decisions and annexes, but in formats that do not comply with the law. Other 14 councils either publish only part of the documents or do not publish anything at all. Among them, for example, is the Tavria city council, where annexes to decisions are available, but the texts themselves are available only upon additional request.

Three types of communities can be distinguished: those that comply with the law in full; those that publish documents but with violations of the formats; and those that formally "unsubscribe" or ignore the requirements altogether. This indicates a lack of effective control over compliance with the openness rules.

The format of the documents published is of great importance. Excel makes it easy to compare metrics, filter data, and analyze costs. PDF is convenient for viewing but difficult to process, and scanned documents generally make analytics a complicated and time-consuming process.

Another problem is the lack of applications. A budget solution without tables of revenues, expenditures, and transfers loses its meaning: only a general "wrapper" remains. This situation is observed, for example, in the Tavria City Council.

Another important aspect is the structure of websites. Some councils logically structure documents in the sections 'Official Documents', 'Archives', 'Military Administration'. Others create confusion in drop-down menus, where finding budget decisions becomes a real quest.

Also, documents are often scattered in different sections, and changes to the budget are not linked to the main decisions. This complicates the work of journalists, analysts and citizens. Only a few examples, such as the Odesa City Council website, allow tracking all budget changes with links between documents.

Thus, some Kherson oblast councils demonstrate real openness and regularly publish full packages of documents, but there are also those that ignore the law or publish documents in a difficult-to-understand format without explanation. Open and convenient publication is still a distant dream for many communities in the region.

Also, in the communities of Kakhovka district, the search for budget documents often resembles a maze of confusing menus, where each click can lead in the wrong direction, and the result is usually the same - a PDF or even a JPEG instead of convenient tables with data.

Анна Бальчінос