LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

In the article the basic problems and ways of further development of local government in the Russian Federation are considered: optimisation of volume of powers at the municipal level and their financial and economic maintenance; planning, management and realisation of achievement of strategic targets of developing the municipalities; estimations of productivity and monitoring of efficiency of activity of local governments. The changes are considered in structure and maintenance of questions of local importance executed within the limits of local powers and problems, connected with execution of the transferred state powers. The attention is paid to the problem of mutual delegation of power between a municipal area and settlements from the position of the two-level model of local government. Specific proposals on optimisation of distribution of powers in granting municipal services are made. The dynamics of change of the mechanism of financial maintenance of local powers when solving questions of local importance during the local government reform (2003-2010) is presented. The most important measures in the areas of budgetary process perfection, profitable base strengthening, and expenses optimisation are offered. As a complex tool uniting all the actions to increase the social and economic development of municipal union, approaches to solve the problems are offered: 1) Strategic planning defining prospects of municipal development, equation of priorities and rates of development with financial resources of municipal formations; 2) Strategic management forming the mechanism of strategy realisation - a control system of actions of the power, business and population to solve the strategic and tactical problems of municipality; 3) Monitoring allowing to operatively provide bodies of municipal authority with full and adequate information to control strategy realisation and to make effective administrative decisions at each level of management. The problem of estimation of local governments activity efficiency is considered from the positions of the legal acts regulating the given process; definitions of the diagnostic indicators characterising the activity of local governments; techniques of estimation and automating the process of estimation of local governments activity efficiency.