‘Despite increasing transparency and publicity, Kyiv city authorities continuously simulate the reforms implementation. KCSA departments run corruption schemes related to land management, urban planning and municipal property’ - OSF Director Ivan Sikora concluded during the round table discussion "Kyiv mayor’s program adopted a year ago: assessing progress in implementing reforms".
According to the OSF study, the majority of Mayor Klitschko’s program points were implemented only partially. Some commitments have symptoms of performance simulation. Promises to reduce corruption were generally forgotten. None of the five declared priorities of this program were implemented in full. OSF estimates were mostly supported by Maksym Hapchuk and Halyna Yanchenko - the experts and members of city council representing oppositional "Samopomich" and "Democratychnyi Alyans".
According to Ivan Sikora, "the promised ‘devastating attack on corruption’ in the area of legalization of land and increased revenue from taxation (including from illegal and unauthorized construction, parking, community property and municipal enterprises, kiosks, mutual contributions of developers, etc.) was the most problematic point of the Klitschko’s program". In order to avoid seeking the sources to increase Kyiv budget revenues, authorities often artificially made the real indicators fit those estimated. Additionally, local authorities continued governmental lobbying for increased share of personal income tax (PIT) remaining in the Kyiv budget. Commitments to create a single database of property in community ownership remain to be implemented. Despite the audit of municipal enterprises the losses of 408 municipal enterprises in the first quarter of 2015 amounted to more than UAH 420 mln. This was 42% more comparing with the same period of 2014. Municipal enterprises’ managers keep being appointed without open competition. Neither the information about enterprises’ financial plans, nor the reports on their implementation, are available the public domain.
OSF President Lesya Shevchenko mentioned the difficulty to assess the program which has no specific numbers or the expected performance indicators. She drew specific examples of problematic access to public documents despite improving municipal authorities’ site content and creation of a new site. Authorities often ignored the requests for public information regarding canceled illegal decisions of the previous city government and detailed plans of territories, or provided the inefficient or untimely responses.
Victor Gleba, the urban development expert drew attention to Mayor Klitschko’s obligations to order land relations and return land plots illegally taken from Kyiv community. In Gleba’s opinion, Klitschko should finally decide whose interests are a priority for him: those of the developers and business owners (vastly represented in his team) or those of Kyiv residents? Referring to specific and well-known illegal construction sites the expert demonstrated the simulation of transparency in Kyiv urban cadastre. Mayor Klitschko does not seem to be interested in initiating the discussions on the current Kyiv 2020 General Plan. Instead, he’s certainly keen to introduce the new Kyiv 2025 General Plan and actually legalize thousands of illegal land acquisitions of the political ‘predecessors’.
Round table participants questioned the willingness of the Klitschko’s team to establish a viable dialogue and true public oversight. KCSA representatives ignored the official invitation to the discussion. Despite the earlier suggestion by Oleksiy Reznikov to evaluate of Klitschko’s team performance after a year in office (and not 100 days), Kyiv government has refused to listen to an alternative expert report on the implementation of the Mayor’s Programme, performed by a think-tank analyzing municipal policy for five years.
The event was organized in the framework of "Kyiv Public Guard: Public Control over the Development and Implementation of Anti-corruption Policy in Kyiv" project, implemented by the Open Society Foundation and supported by the International Renaissance Foundation.
Open Society Foundation analyzed Kyiv municipal policy for 5 years. Our accomplishments include:
- Regular analysis of the budget, land, urban development and anti-corruption policy in Kyiv;
- Evaluation of the first 100 days of the Klytschko’s team (September 2014);
- Development of the "Roadmap of reforms in fiscal and anti-corruption policy" (June 2014);
- For the first time ever initiating public debates on city budget and active participation in providing suggestions concerning the content of budgetary policy;
- Contribution to blocking new Kyiv 2025 General Plan ‘named after Leonid Chernovetskyi’; information and consulting support to initiative groups of local residents suffering from unlawful decisions (scandalous constructions in Osokorki, Mykilska Slobidka, Prospeckt Nauky, etc.)
- Contribution to the "Reanimation Package for Reforms for Kyiv" initiative and the Anti-Corruption Council of Kyiv, development of the anti-corruption program for Kyiv.
Watch the video from the round table discussion "Kyiv mayor’s program adopted a year ago: assessing progress in implementing reforms ".
