First year in office: how Odesa city council deputies performed their duties in 2021

The public campaign"Certification of Local Council Deputies" summarizes the results of the first year of work of the deputies of the Odesa City Council of the eighth convocation from November 25, 2020, to December 1, 2021.

According to the results of the personal assessment of the deputies' performance based on objective indicators during the first year of their term of office, almost half of the deputies received a positive score of 4 points.

Seven deputies received the maximum score of 5 points: Oleksiy Asaulenko, Oleksiy Yeremytsia, Natalia Zhukova, Olha Kvasnytska, Svitlana Osaulenko, Eduard Stas, Oleh Filimonov.

A positive score of 4 points was given to 29 MPs, and another 25 MPs received a score of 3 points.

Two MPs received a low score of 2 points - Nikita Avdeev and Oleksandr Baiderin.

The lowest negative score of 1 point was given to MP Ivan Demchenko.

On average, the performance of the entire deputy corps of Odesa City Council was rated at 3.6 points.

As for the factional affiliation, the assessment of the activities of the deputy factions ranges from 3 to 4.4 points.

The highest score was recorded for the activities of the "Servant of the People" faction - 4.4 points. Members of the European Solidarity faction received an average score of 3.9 points, the Opposition Platform - For Life faction - 3.6 points, and the Trust the Deeds faction - 3.4 points. The average score for the MPs of the "Shariy Party" faction and non-factional MPs is 3 points.

The results of the expert assessment of the performance of Odesa city council members, which is conducted as an alternative to the objective assessment based on the criteria, showed a lower level of assessment.

Thus, experts did not give the maximum score of 5 points to any deputy.

Nine MPs received a score of 4 points from the experts: Oleksiy Asaulenko, Anastasia Bolshedvorova, Oleksiy Yeremitsa, Natalia Zhukova, Olha Kvasnytska, Liliia Leonidova, Vadym Morokhovsky, Petro Obukhov, and Oleksandr Sheremet.

The experts gave 37 deputies 3 points, while 18 deputies received 2 points.

Experts gave the entire deputy corps of Odesa City Council a score of 2.8 points.

At the end of the first year in office, profiles of all 64 deputies were created on the official portal 'Your Deputy of Odesa City Council'.

However, full information (information on education, experience and place of work, party affiliation and photo) was published only for 16 deputies.

No information has been published on seven MPs: Nikita Avdeev, Oleksandr Baiderin, Andriy Vagapov, Mykhailo Karpenchuk, Olena Korobkova, Olha Makohoniuk, and Serhiy Shmatko.

The profiles of two other deputies, Oleksiy Nagatkin and Hanna Shabanova , were removed from the portal at the beginning of the second year of the council's term for unknown reasons.

Information on deputy receptions and reception of citizens was published for 63 deputies.

Full information on receiving citizens is published for 53 deputies. There is no information on the deputy's office and means of communication with the deputy for Ivan Demchenko.

The profiles of 9 other MPs contain incomplete information on receiving voters.

Only official e-mail addresses are published for these deputies.

Most of the deputies of Odesa city council at the beginning of their terms of office organized and conduct personal reception of voters.

Through monitoring visits to the reception offices and telephone conversations with the deputies, it was possible to confirm that 61 deputies hold regular personal receptions. Information about personal reception of citizens could not be confirmed in relation to three MPs: Nikita Avdeev, Oleksandr Baiderin and Ivan Demchenko.

The vast majority of MPs prefer to inform voters about their activities through the social network Facebook.

At the beginning of their term, 62 deputies of Odesa city council had personal profiles or public pages on Facebook. The profiles of Ivan Demchenko and Yuriy Shumakher could not be identified on Facebook.

Bohdan Hihanov and Olha Makohoniuk deleted their personal pages after the outbreak of full-scale military operations in 2022.

There were 44 MPs who actively used their personal Facebook profiles and pages, published information about their activities and responded to users' posts.

Nine MPs periodically informed about their activities on the social network during the year, but did not respond to comments and posts of users. Nine deputies also did not use their personal Facebook profiles to communicate with voters during their first year in office.

The vast majority of Odesa city council deputies demonstrate high discipline in attending meetings of sessions and standing committees of the council.

A total of 54 councillors attended 90% or more of the council meetings. All meetings of the sessions (100%) were attended by 33 deputies during the first year of their mandate. One less meeting (90%) was attended by 21 deputies.

Viktor Baransky attended exactly half of the council meetings (50%). Less than half of the council meetings (40%) were attended by deputy Oleksandra Kovalchuk, but she had valid personal reasons for this.

The level of attendance at meetings of the council's standing committees is traditionally lower than attendance at sessions. In total, 29 deputies attended 90% or more of the meetings of the standing committees of which they are members: 15 deputies attended 100% of the meetings, and another 14 deputies attended 90% of the meetings of the standing committees.

Four MPs attended less than 50% of the meetings. Vadym Morokhovskyi attended 48% of the committee's meetings, Yuriy Shumacher - 40% of the meetings, Ilya Freiman - 25%, and Andriy Kislovskyi - 11% of the meetings.

As of the end of the first year of the council's mandate, the Standing Committee on Culture and Tourism consists of two deputies : Oleh Filimonov (chairman of the committee) and Iryna Holovatyuk-Yuzephpolska. The commission has not held a single meeting.

As of the end of 2021, six MPs were not members of any of the standing committees: Viktor Baransky, Ivan Demchenko, Oleksiy Yeremitsa, Volodymyr Ivanov, Volodymyr Kornienko, and Serhiy Uzunov.

The right to submit a deputy inquiry at the sessions of Odesa city council was exercised by 15 deputies.

There was also one case of non-personal voting in relation to the deputy Tetyana Plaksiy.

Only half of the deputies have the texts of reports on their activities during the first year of their mandate.

Objectively, the situation with the preparation and conduct of the reporting campaign was negatively affected by the outbreak of full-scale military operations on the territory of Ukraine. However, half of the MPs (32) managed to prepare reports, but 15 of these reports were not published on the official MP portal.

Another seven MPs held public meetings with voters to present their reports.

Another important evaluation criterion is the compliance of the text of the report with the requirements of the law. Thus, the report of one MP, Olena Vododyuk, meets all five requirements. Reports of nine MPs meet four criteria, reports of 17 MPs meet three criteria, and reports of six MPs meet two criteria.

For more details on the report on the performance of their powers by Odesa city council deputies during the first year, please follow the link.

For more information on recommendations for Odesa city council members on how to fulfill their deputy powers, please follow the link.

More information about the public campaign "Certification of Local Council Deputies" is available here.

You can follow the campaign's regular updates:
On the web platform Attestation of Local Council Deputies
On the Facebook page "Local Deputies. Attestation".

The civic campaign "Attestation of Local Council Deputies" aims to help solve the problem of low level of openness, transparency and accountability to voters of deputies of 23 local councils from 17 regions of Ukraine, as well as to raise public awareness of the activities of local deputies. The project "Certification of Local Council Deputies" is implemented by the Odesa regional organization of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine together with partner organizations from 16 regions of Ukraine with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED, USA). In 2016, the methodology was tested in the local councils of Odesa region with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation, and since 2018, the web platform "Local Deputies. Attestation" is being developed.