Mykolaiv City Council Sessions: Problems of Legitimacy in the Age of Digitalization

Mykolaiv city council has been operating and holding sessional meetings remotely for more than two years. In addition to the non-transparent voting procedure, when the screen does not show whether the deputy is present at the meeting at all, there are a number of other comments on the organization of online voting.

These conclusions were made by experts of the Odesa regional organization of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine after analyzing the activities of Mykolaiv City Council.

Since the beginning of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, local self-government has undergone significant changes that have affected the work of local councils. According to the rules, the session is convened by the mayor, and information about the remote meeting must be provided to the public no later than 24 hours before it starts.

However, this requirement is often violated, and the agenda along with draft decisions may appear on the council website late at night before the meeting. This makes it difficult for both the public and deputies to familiarize themselves with the documents. The regulations also state that organizational issues of remote sessions are the responsibility of several departments and utilities, but their responsibilities are not clearly defined.

The session usually begins with a request from the chairman to the MPs to turn on their cameras to confirm their presence. While the data confirms that a quorum is present, many deputies are often missing from the screen, raising doubts about the legitimacy of the session and the votes. After confirming their presence, some MPs turn off their cameras, continuing to participate in the session without video, which casts doubt on their personal participation.

After the session, the official website publishes minutes, videos and voting results, but often with a delay. The minutes of the last three sessions have not yet been published. The sessions are held through Zoom.us (Workplace Pro version), which provides technical capabilities for remote meetings and voting, but there are concerns about the transparency of this process.

For example, voting is done through Google Forms-like forms rather than by raising hands or announcing a vote, which makes it difficult to track which deputies are voting and how. There is also no counting commission, and the chairman sometimes has to convince MPs to take part in the voting. In addition, the vote counting system does not take into account the "did not vote" option.

Experts of the All-Ukrainian Civil Society Company have compiled a list of grounds that call into question the legality of the sessions and the legitimacy of the decisions made during remote meetings of Mykolaiv city council sessions:

1. Connection disruptions: Internet failure or technical problems may prevent participation in voting or cause delays. In the context of blackouts and communication problems, this makes it particularly difficult for MPs to access voting.
2. Unregulated use of online tools: Zoom failures or errors in the voting form can affect the correctness of the process. There have been numerous situations when the voting form did not work for deputies. And the council's regulations or other documents do not provide for an access procedure, the degree of data protection, or the resolution of any procedural issues that arise when working with online tools.
3. Unauthorized persons and lack of personal identification: due to the lack of information on the identification of the persons present, the cameras being turned off, and the absence of images of all the deputies present, it is impossible to understand which deputy is present and how they vote. And the absence of such a control tool as a counting commission or other body created among the deputies may allow unauthorized persons to join the meeting and vote, which can influence the decision-making process.
4. Non-transparent voting: there is no clear and transparent voting procedure where community members can identify how a deputy votes on each item on the agenda.
5. Legitimacy of sessions: In general, the way remote sessions are held in Mykolaiv city council can lead to manipulation and distortion of voting results and become grounds for judicial appeal of almost every decision of the council made in this way.

The company's experts recommend that the deputies of Mykolaiv City Council improve the regulations by making the procedure of remote meetings more transparent and understandable to the public to avoid any doubts about the legitimacy of the sessions.

Mykolaiv city council can also address local self-government issues within the framework of the Constitution and laws of Ukraine. The main recommendation of the experts is for the Verkhovna Rada to adopt uniform rules for holding remote meetings for all councils. As the country continues to function under martial law, situations may arise when it will be necessary to hold online meetings urgently. Therefore, local councils need a clear model for holding such meetings, taking into account both international experience and the practice that Ukrainian communities have already acquired.

Recently, deputies of the Mykolaiv regional council have also raised the issue of holding sessions online. There was a suspicion that anyone could vote in this way and this process could not be controlled.

Intent has repeatedly drawn attention to the issue of voting and sent relevant requests to local authorities. For example, in April, the online broadcast of the Mykolaiv Regional Council session did not take place, and the journalists of the publication made a request to the press service about the lack of online broadcast of the session held on April 25, 2024. The head of the press service of the Mykolaiv Regional Council, Hanna Chepova, responded to the question of why there was no online broadcast by explaining that it was due to security measures.

In late July, Mykolaiv City Council once again violated the voting procedure. Nomax agency programmer Ihor Fomenko confirmed to our publication that the voting was taking place via Zoom, without any third-party programs. He noted that a separate system with authorization through Diia or banking is needed. "In Zoom, when the screen is off, it is impossible to confirm who is voting, as anyone can log in via an email invitation. This is not a very secure scheme.

Intent asked Mykolaiv City Council for comment, but the press secretary of Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandra Senkevych refused to comment on the issue, arguing that she was not a spokesperson for Mykolaiv City Council.

Анна Бальчінос