COMPLIANCE WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY OF PUBLIC FINANCES BY POLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENTS BASED ON AN EXAMPLE OF LARGE CITIES

The principles of openness and transparency of public finances are considered to be the most important and fundamental principles for budget economy. Compliance with both these principles is a prerequisite for efficient public control of the management of local finances, and thus for efficient spending of public funds. The purpose of this article is to analyze the statutory provisions on openness and transparency of public finances in order to answer the question as to what extent direct implementation of such provisions guarantees efficient spending of public funds and communication with the local community. To this end, an analysis of financial data was performed about the execution of the budget, for the last budget year available at the official websites of the largest Polish cities, as well as of data available on the website of the Ministry of Finance on budgeting practices employed by Polish local governments. In addition, the article presents the core features of a task budget whose execution may contribute to better and more efficient communication with the local community, as well as to better comply with the principles of openness and transparency. However, this requires the implementation of reporting standards with such a structure and format of information that will be comprehensible and clear to the citizen.