The county heads gathered in the Croatian Association of Counties met with the Minister of Administration Arsen Bauk, and conveyed their proposals for the Law on Local and Regional Self-Government.
The main issues that the county heads find illogical are the referendum for recall, the dissolution of leaders and executive bodies if the assembly does not adopt the budget, and the proposal to grant powers to the presidential body regarding the appointment of representatives of units in local and regional companies. According to the new proposal, a referendum for dismissal will require 33 percent of all registered voters, unlike before when more than 50 percent of registered voters had to participate in the referendum.
In practice, this would mean that if there are 100,000 voters in a certain place, 33,000 votes would need to be collected for dismissal.
– Regarding dissolution in the case of budget non-approval, this is not good because mayors, heads, and county heads can only be dismissed by those who directly elected them. This proposal is unacceptable to us, and we have informed the minister about it,” emphasized Božo Galić, president of the Association and Vukovar-Srijem County head.
The minister listened to their remarks, and the Law will soon go to a second reading, after which it will be possible to say how many comments were accepted. He also announced that for the next local elections we can expect voting via open lists.
– For these local elections, this is not possible because it would be undemocratic to change the system six months before the elections. However, this will be the case for the European Parliament elections. After that, we will start discussing changes for local elections, and by the end of next year, changes for parliamentary elections,” emphasized Bauk.
Bauk also did not want to comment on a possible reduction in the number of counties, but Galić was resolute.
– This will not bring significant savings, and what is much more important is to see who does what and to rationalize costs. This is one form of savings, but abolishing counties would not achieve that,” concluded Galić.
