Helping Kosovo's municipalities overcome reform challenges
Just before local elections last November, the legal framework governing Kosovo's municipalities was changed, affecting both their structure and internal budgeting. The OSCE Mission in Kosovo, which supports local government reform, is helping municipalities to continue providing services while adapting to the changes.
Restructuring for efficiency
In November 2007, the UN Mission in Kosovo issued Regulation 2007/30, prompting a new wave of changes aimed at boosting the efficiency and transparency of local government. To begin with, the posts of Chief Executive Officer and Municipal Assembly President were replaced by the directly elected post of Municipal Mayor.
The regulation also called on municipalities, which had on average 10 to 12 departments for different issues, to restructure into roughly four programmatic departments and one for administration and human resources.
According to Paivi Nikander, Chief of the OSCE Mission's Local Governance Unit, the changes prompted the Mission to focus on helping municipalities carry on with their usual work while pushing ahead with reforms.
Municipal leadership forums
Since 2006, the Mission has been organizing regular forums to bring together key municipal financial and executive officials, as well as representatives of the Kosovo Ministries of Economy and Finance and of Local Government Administration, and the Association of Kosovo Municipalities.
The municipal leadership forums aim to enhance co-operation between central and local governments and ease municipal budget reforms, which are moving budgeting from a centralized to a programme-based system. Another goal is to increase transparency through public budget hearings.
"The forums came in handy," says Biserka Ivanovic, Project Officer at the Mission. "We are now using them to help municipalities and Kosovo's central government work closely on implementing the new regulation."
Sazan Ibrahimi from the Association of Kosovo Municipalities says that the forums' work is crucial at the moment because the time given to implement reforms and comply with the regulation is very short.
"Many municipalities were not fully established until February," he says. "To get funding from Kosovo's consolidated budget for the second half of 2008, we have to submit our amended statutes and mid-year financial report - all of which must comply with the new structures - by mid-June." Eighty per cent of municipal funding comes from the central budget.
Ensuring services
So far in 2008, four forums have been held with sessions on municipal reorganization, statutes development and budget reprogramming.
"In this situation, we are doing the best we can to make sure the municipalities receive the best possible guidance and correct interpretation of the regulation by the central level authorities, so that they can meet the deadline and receive their funding," says Nikander. "Otherwise, the services they provide could be jeopardized."
In addition to helping meet the mid-June deadline, the forums are also preparing municipalities for their 2009 budgets.
"The process we are going through is complex and good communication between all stakeholders is very important," says Petrit Popova, Director of the Municipal Budget Department at the Kosovo Ministry of Economy and Finance. "The forums are a communications platform we could not do without."
And while all the efforts are now geared towards making sure the new structures function properly and that the amended statutes and financial reports are submitted in time, new laws governing the work of municipalities are already being drafted.
"Our priority, nonetheless, is to help municipalities remain operational," says Nikander. "We'll deal with new challenges as they arise."