March 3, 2025, 5:27 p.m.
(PHOTO: Freepik)
The transparency of local councils in the South of Ukraine remains low, as only Mykolaiv district council fully publishes its resolutions. Other councils partially fulfill this requirement, which indicates the lack of a systematic approach to ensuring openness and access to information for citizens.
In order to find out how local governments in the south comply with this rule, the Center for Public Investigations asked local councils in Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions to publish their leaders' resolutions for 2024. The results were not very encouraging: only one of the nine councils published all resolutions.
Mykolaiv City Council showed the best results in publishing resolutions. Out of 810 resolutions signed by Oleksandr Senkevych, 325 were published on the website, which is 40.12% of the total. The remaining 485 resolutions were not published due to national security issues or internal organizational needs.
Alyona Yegorova, project manager of the "Certification of Local Council Deputies" project, noted that martial law may complicate the transparency of local councils, especially in the frontline areas, but this should not be an excuse for complete secrecy. She also emphasized that, despite the adopted transparency laws, the issue of clear standards for the publication of documents remains unresolved in practice.
The only council out of all those surveyed that publishes all its resolutions is Mykolaiv district council. Last year, the council chairperson Hanna Koverznyeva signed 102 resolutions, and all of them were made public.
Instead, Anton Tabunshchyk, the head of Mykolaiv regional council, signed 668 resolutions, of which only five were published. The other 663 orders, according to the head of the regional council, are not subject to publication due to martial law. These include documents on personnel issues and awards.
Thus, according to the conclusion of the Center for Public Investigations, the transparency of local councils in the South of Ukraine remains a big question mark. Only one of the nine councils, Mykolaiv District Council, fully complies with this norm, while the rest fulfill it, at best, by only 40%. It is important that citizens, civil society organizations and the media have unimpeded access to information, as this is their right and should not be restricted.
In 2023, local councils became more transparent compared to 2022 in terms of publishing information about their deputies. The results of the work of deputies of 15 city councils in 2023 were prepared by experts of the all-Ukrainian campaign "Certification of Local Council Deputies". In particular, the average level of publication of full biographical data of deputies on the official websites of the councils increased from 29% in 2022 to 38% in 2023. On average, 42% of deputies reported on their work over the past year.
It is also worth noting that Mykolaiv city council has been holding sessional meetings online for more than two years. However, despite this progress, there are some problems with the transparency of voting: the screens do not show whether deputies are present at the meeting, and there are other comments on the organization of online voting.
Анна Бальчінос