On the evening of May 18, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill adopted by parliament №7269, which regulates the work of local authorities during martial law. To what extent does the law regulate the positions of territorial communities in various situations - occupation, front line, rear? Do local governments feel threatened by limiting their powers in favor of military administrations? OPORA experts and guests spoke about this during the traditional weekly stream OPORA LIVE.
According to OPORA's analyst Oleksandr Neberykut, the list of problems faced by local governments under martial law has changed dramatically. The approach to these problems is very individual, depending on the situation in each community. On February 24, the Presidential Decree established temporary subjects of power - military administrations. Now there's a lot of misunderstanding about how these levels interact with each other and what are the powers of functioning local government bodies.
All oblast and raion administrations perform the functions of military administrations. In addition to their traditional functions as state administrations, they are still subordinate to the General Staff and have military responsibilities. And at the community (hromada) level, such military administrations can be introduced individually in situations where, for example, local self-government bodies do not perform their functions, Neberykut notes.
"There's a need for quick and prompt decision-making and problems with the quorum and meeting of local self-government bodies. Therefore, there are various positions - from giving the broadest powers to community chairpersons to criticism that this could lead to misuse", Oleksandr Neberykut.
Also, according to Neberykut, key questions are termination of powers of oblast and raion administrations (which must be purely executive bodies of military administrations) and revision of the structure of local councils formed after elections (for deputies from banned parties).
According to Olha Kotsiuruba, OPORA's senior legal adviser, martial law legislation was passed long ago, and the state introduced it throughout the country for the first time. Therefore, analysis, looking for gaps, and interpretations are happening now.
"There is a situation where the law does not clearly define what is happening - which local self-government bodies are in force and are being terminated. And indeed, this has created such legal uncertainty. The first attempt to solve it was bill 7153. It contained a provision that termination of powers of local self-government bodies during martial law is inadmissible. Such wording created another problem - what to do with local self-government bodies in the occupied territories and could make some decisions. Can these decisions be considered as those taken by the authority? And there were some other controversial provisions in this law. It didn't end very well in terms of law enforcement: the law was passed, sent to the President for signature, 15 days passed, and there was no signature or veto. But the fact that the bill 7269 appeared in the parliament, which in many points on local self-government repeats or formulates the same legal relations from the previous bill in a slightly different way, shows that apparently, the parliament has information that the bill 7153 will not be signed," Olha Kotsiuruba.
The lawyer emphasizes that the adopted draft law 7269 contains a norm that local self-government bodies may be terminated during martial law under some conditions, in particular, in the occupied territories. This decision must be made by the parliament on the President's proposal.
According to her, another initiative is bill 7362 on deputies who were elected from parties whose actions are currently suspended by the decision of the National Security and Defense Council and against which lawsuits will be filed regarding their ban. She says the mechanism proposed there doesn't stand up to criticism.
Vitaliy Bezgin, MP and Chairperson of the Subcommittee on Administrative and Territorial Organization of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development, and Urban Planning, mentioned: "Did decentralization survive the crash test of a full-scale war? In my opinion, for the most part, it did. Although, in general, its weaknesses were exposed. Of course, now the problem for lawmakers is that we are not acting proactively but reactively. We're trying to fix the system on the fly when new problems arise, which have a completely different dimension," Bezgin said.
This is, in particular, due to the fact that we have occupied communities, deoccupied communities, communities on the fireline, and rear communities. There are problems due to the different needs of different communities, even in terms of advocacy of specific ideas and finding tools. And the bill №7269 was no exception. "But what is the problem, in my opinion? This was the first bill since February 24 regarding which, to my mind, an open political game began. I think it was a bit too much democracy. I will explain why. When we talk about the government system during the war, objectively, there are no correct or wrong decisions. There is a model we must implement and see if it is effective or not. And bringing everything to the political plane is not quite correct, I think", he said.
According to Bezgin, the critical thing that the aim of both bills in local government was to enable communities to function as such. He was personally a supporter of Bill 7269 in the first reading. The adopted bill 7269 was a compromise - there are only seven individual powers left for community chairpersons. The first bill was approved for voting with opposition parties and had three blocks: self-government, unblocking the civil service, and expanding the powers of the government during martial law. According to the people's deputy, the third block seemed redundant. "Therefore, the bill 7269 was almost a copy of the previous bill in its basic variant except for extra powers of government. And when we take the key provisions, they were the same. So, I don't quite understand the subject of the political discussion," Vitaliy Bezgin.
He noted that the powers of community chairpersons had been expanded, but they were not able to do anything with the executive committee during martial law. Bezgin also gave two arguments why individual powers had to be given: 1) it's challenging to gather a quorum in city councils under fire for operational decisions; 2) transfer of powers of oblast and raion councils to military administrations in case of encirclement or occupation.
As for the decision on deputies from banned political parties, according to Vitaliy Bezgin, he has an internal dilemma as a citizen who wants quick decisions and justice and a lawmaker who wants to act within the legislative framework. "We need to think more about how the organs work and whether the territory works than throwing someone out or not throwing them out. Because throwing someone out is easy. The question is not to throw someone out to paralyze everything," Vitaliy Bezgin said. He also believes that it is more appropriate to approach the issue of the deprivation of seats of each deputy in a personalized way.
Serhii Kondrachuk, Chairperson of the Rivne Oblast Council, told about the chronology of events in their regional council. On March 5, at an extraordinary meeting, they delegated to the oblast military administration the right to make changes to the regional budget and regional programs. But almost all deputies have recently been actively participating in the meetings of standing committees of the regional council. A plenary session of the council is scheduled for this week.
According to Kondrachuk, the priorities for the council have changed, as well as for other structures. The security and defense sector became a priority and internally displaced persons. Some institutions have become volunteer centers or logistics warehouses. "A third of the staff of the oblast council works in the military administration call center. Some people work in logistics warehouses. Lawyers advise refugees. The chairman of the council and his deputies are members of the oblast Security and Defense Council," Kondrachuk.
He also noted that although he and the head of the military administration are representatives of various political parties and have had many disputes of a political nature, they now actively cooperate.
As for the legislative initiative to transfer the powers of local self-government bodies to military administrations, Serhii Kondrachuk is against this, at least in the context of the rear Rivne region. "I think this is a path to dictatorship. It would be very wrong. Because, if I understand correctly, we still have international law over national law. And the European Charter of Local Self-Government has not been repealed, and Articles 7, 140, 144 of the Constitution It is not necessary to oppress local self-government in any way, to transfer our powers to our rear region, which can hold meetings of standing commissions and plenary sessions without interruption, to military administrations. Because I do not think the bills are written "on the knees" to solve the issues, they rather create them," Serhii Kondrachuk said. "From the point of view of controllability, at least in Rivne oblast, it is so inconvenient for me to say that it has become easier. But everyone understands the responsibility of the moment, the need to work even better than before a full-scale invasion. And I don't see any bases and needs to reduce or change the powers of our regional council in any way."
Unfortunately, the previously invited mayors were not able to join the discussion for different reasons.
OPORA's lawyer Olha Kotsiuruba summed up that the challenges mayors are currently facing are unprecedented. There is no money to solve these problems and an understanding of whether the burden of rebuilding the facilities will be shared with the city budget by the state. OPORA's analyst Oleksandr Neberykut noted that in this situation, many local self-government bodies and officials could not be effective since the scale of the challenges is entirely disproportionate to what local governments can do. And this is not even a question of authority.