The question of the mechanism for publishing decisions of local authorities

Deputies in the course of the Committee on Regional Policy, Local Self-Government and Housing and Communal meeting discussed amendments to the draft law on amendments and additions to the Law of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic “On local authorities, local self-government and state administration in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic”. The author of the legislative initiative was the Council of People's Deputies of Grigoriopol and Grigoriopol district.

Any legal act of local government and local self-government bodies comes into force after its official publication according to the current legislation. The placement of their full text in local newspapers is considered official publication at the same time. It still needs to be published in the next issue of the local print media if the legal act was first posted on the official website. However, various appendices to legal acts are quite voluminous, and local periodicals usually have a small number of spreads.

The Council of People's Deputies of the Grigoriopol district and the city of Grigoriopol drew attention to this problem. They cited as an example the Druzhba (Friendship) local newspaper, which is published once a week in two spreads.

“There are provisions on village councils that are of the same type. If our 14 village councils in the Grigoriopol region publish all their provisions in our regional newspaper, then our newspaper will turn into an almanac of provisions. It will become unreadable. This will entail both a reduction in circulation and a reduction in the number of subscribers,” the Grigoriopol Council of People’s Deputies explained.

Amendments to the law-in-draft propose to provide an opportunity not to publish annexes to the decisions of local councils and state administrations in newspapers, provided that the first publication of the legal act was published in full in official publication sources.

Such a right is granted if the first publication of the full text of the legal act was posted on the official website of the relevant body.

The deputies of the Committee supported the amendments to the law-in-draft and recommended it for consideration at the plenary session in the second reading mode.