LGI Local Government Call for Papers

crossposted from LGI Announce List

Subject: Call for authors of country reports

Call for authors of country reports for the "Regulations on conflict
of interest at local governments" project

1. Goals and objectives

The "Local Government Policy Partnership" (LGPP) is a joint program
of the Department for International Development (UK) and Local
Government Initiative, Open Society Institute (Budapest). The
objective of this cooperation is to produce comparative policy
studies on selected local government issues. Beneficiaries of the
policy proposals are national government ministries, local government
associations, research and training institutions. The partner
countries are Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, but
depending on the topics more countries are involved in some projects.
Analytical papers with policy proposals are produced by the
participating country teams,  under the professional coordination of
the editor and project manager. Country studies should respond on the
local problems, the primary target audiences are the national and
local policy makers. But at the same time the country studies should
be comparable, providing information for general conclusions and
policy proposals for other countries in the Central Eastern European
region. Information on previous LGPP projects are available at
http://lgi.osi.hu/lgpp/.
The project will cover the period of July, 2002 and March, 2003.
The budget of the LGPP program allows only policy research using the
already available information for secondary analysis. The
approximately 30 pages long policy papers should focus on the present
practices and respond on the governments' needs in the selected
countries.


2. Background

There is growing concern in CEE countries over the emergence of
conflicts of interest in the management of local governments and
their service organizations. These have led to attempts in some
countries to strengthen the legal regulation of such conflicts.
There are two broad issues, which are subjects of conflict of
interest legislation:
I. The classical conflict of interest cases, which might be subjects
of constitutional rules and general legislation. They are based on
principles, like separation of powers, restricted employment of
public employees in the private sector, etc. Formal rules and
regulations can specify these general requirements.
II. The other group of conflicts have two dimensions:

A/ The first is the use of power by officials to promote the private
interests of themselves, their relatives or commercial enterprises in
which they participate. This might, for example, involve the award of
municipal contracts, permits or licenses. Legal safeguards might
prohibit full time officials from engagement in commerce, or require
all officials to disclose private interest in any issue under
consideration and withdraw from participation in related decisions.

B/ Within this group the second conflict is more subtle and does not
necessarily involve personal corruption. It concerns the potential
conflict between the roles of a local government, on the one hand, as
defender of the public interest in the quality and efficiency of
municipal services and, on the other hand, as the owner or founder of
local service providers such as a school or heating company and
employer (direct or indirect) of its staff. It is the type of
institutional conflict which makes it difficult for municipalities to
reduce teaching staff number when pupil numbers decline or install
metering which would reduce consumption of heating supplies. Legal
regulations might prohibit staff of municipal companies or
institutions from membership of elected councils or mayors from
membership of municipal company boards. These conflicts can be
identified as conflict of roles or conflict of obligations.


3. Conflicts of interest: subjects, areas, procedures


The objective of this project is to analyze the legal and regulatory
framework on conflict of interest situations both of local elected
officials and civil servants/administrative employees. National laws
and local codes of conduct should be assessed, by identifying the
conflict areas, assessing their importance and advising policy makers
on changing regulations and procedures. The analysis and the
proposals should focus on local level. In the country reports authors
should refer to issues discussed in the section 2. of this Terms of
Reference.


a) Subjects of regulations

There are two basic groups, who might be subjects of legislation and
regulation on conflicts of interest: (i) elected representatives and
officials: councilors (local government elected representatives);
mayors; committee chairpersons and (ii) civil servants and public
employees: leading local government officials; civil servants/
administrative employees at local governments; public employees in a
managerial position.
Obviously conflict of interest regulations are relevant for any other
spheres of the public sector, because procedures for managing public
issues should follow similar rules (e.g. in parliaments, at national
governments, chambers of commerce, political parties, advocacy
organizations).


b) Potential areas, where conflicts might emerge

I. Issues typically covered by the general legislation

1. Duplication of powers in context of post conjunction might
cause problems for mayors, so the regulations should address the
problem, whether elected representatives can be members of councils
and parliament at the same time. Regulations should be clear whether
they can be presidents of the republic, judges at the constitutional
court. General requirements on the separation of powers prohibits,
that mayors cannot be judges, prosecutors, military and police
employees. It is conflicting also, when mayors are councilors or
mayors at another municipality.
2. Councilors and mayors might be in a conflict situation, when
they are civil servants at a national government agency or regional
units of those central government organs, which supervise or manage
the administrative matters of the particular local government. It
might raise problems also if the councilor is a civil servant at the
same municipality.
3. Employment condition of mayors are critical for ensuring the
financial integrity of these elected representatives. Usually they
are not allowed to take any permanent jobs, other than academic,
education, editorial, artistic work or authorship. Employment
conditions for some leading elected officials might be even more
strictly regulated. In the case of civil servants (local
administrative staff) the employment conditions should be regulated:
under what conditions and what type of jobs can civil servants take.
4. The legislation on economic conflict of interest situations
should specify the relationship between mayors, councilors and
publicly owned enterprises. There are two areas of regulations: how
can elected representatives take (i) managerial positions at publicly
owned companies  (at their subsidiaries) or at financial institutions
and (ii) board membership. At local level the councilors' and mayors'
involvement in budgetary institutions or any other public
institutions (e.g. public funds) as managers should be subject of
regulations.
5. The privatization and concession agreements might also cause
conflicts of interest. The question is what are the conditions for
taking any leading managerial position or board membership (only with
a delay).
6. Similarly the position of elected representatives vis-a-vis
entities winning public contracts should be restricted (the area of
public procurement).
7. Regulations on declarations on income and property. Regular
and publicly available  - might be good instruments to follow the
changes in elected representatives' financial position. The scope of
this regulation might cover the relatives. Limits on getting gifts
and presents might be also specified by the legislation.
8. The independence of the media might be at risk when mayors
take chief editorial positions at regional or local newspapers,
television or radio.
9. Economic conflicts might also be arisen in the public sector,
when managerial, auditing and controlling relationship are created
between relatives.
10. Civil servants' involvement in party politics might cause
conflicts, as well. The regulations should clarify the civil
servants' exposure at political party events and the procedures for
running as candidates during the campaign period.


II. Specific, "soft" areas of potential conflicts

At local and national governments there are various situations, when
the objectivity and impartiality of the public actors are endangered.
These conflict of interest regulations cannot be easily built into
the general legislation, but they are as important areas of the
public life, as the more or less strictly regulated issues.
Personal interest and involvement in decisions, like zoning, tax
relieves, economic subsidies, public contracts (procurement, service
provision) and any misuse of insider information are the critical
areas. The communities and the pubic bodies should develop their own
codes of ethics and codes of conducting businesses, because in this
area the narrow legal approach is not the most efficient form of
regulation.  The other area is, where the institutional interest of
councilors is in conflict with the goals of the local service
organizations, budgetary institutions  or municipal companies.

c) Forms of influence: legislation and procedures

1. The general legal environment provides the basic framework,
through the hierarchy of laws and regulations.
Basic legislation specifies constitutional principles preventing
conflict of interest  and laws identify specific conditions and
procedures. These laws provide only the necessary legal conditions,
but they are not sufficient tools for prevention.
2. Enforcement mechanisms mostly depend on the discretion of the
local councils, which are sometimes authorized to give special
permissions and exemptions. These cases could be part of the
legislation or they are procedures and internal rules developed
locally.
3. Procedures on declaring and managing personal involvement in
public decisions, regulated by the national legislation or by local
codes of conduct.

4. Working methods and expected outputs

The authors of the country reports are asked to give a general
overview of the legislation and regulation on the conflict of
interest situations in the public sector, focusing on local
governments:
1. Constitutional principles preventing conflict of interest
(legal analysis concerning constitutional principles preventing
conflict of interest in local government - basic framework (rule of
law, lawfulness, judicial fairness, rule against bias, openness and
transparency, protection of legitimate trust and vested rights).
2. Legal basis of conflict of interest counteracting
· the legal and administrative rules - laws identifying
specific conditions - substantial prerequisites of conflict of
interest;
· the legal and administrative procedures - laws identifying
specific conditions and procedures - procedural instruments
preventing conflict of interest: ways of undertaking activities in
case of conflict of interest;
· accountability and responsibilities for activities causing
conflict of interest

3. Other means counteracting with conflict of interest. The
internal regulations on conflict of interest (statutes, by-laws,
codes of ethics, codes of conduct) - the influence of public office
organizational structure and regulations for the potential conflict
of interest;
4. The country papers should formulate detailed proposals for
policy makers at national and local governments in both comprehensive
potential areas of conflict of interest situations: (i) what type of
general legal regulations should be developed - conclusions de lege
ferenda and  (ii) how procedures on which specific situations should
be designed and built into the public life - conclusions de lege
ferenda.
5. Beyond the description of legal and administrative rules and
procedures some evidence on the scale of the problems will be
collected. It should be based on secondary analysis of surveys, labor
statistics of councilors and individual cases.

5. Timing of the planned project

1. Submission of proposals.
 July 31.
2. Selection of country teams
LGPP partners, August 31.
3. Launching workshop with the country teams
Editor, LGI, September 30.
4. Draft country reports
Experts, November 30.
5. Revisions, final country reports
Experts, January 31.
6. Draft summary report
Editor, February 28.
7. Regional conference
Editor and LGI, March 30.
8. Publication of final reports.
LGI, April 30.

6. Application procedures

The bids may be submitted by individual authors or by teams (in the
latter case the leading author must be clearly identified). Submitted
proposal should include:
· Highlighting the most important issues concerning preventing
the conflict of interest in the country (maximum 3 pages).
· CV(s) of the author (authors) indicating their experience and
skills required to perform  the study.
· Proposed budget for the study.

Applications should be submitted to LGI via e-mail ([email protected],
with "LGPP: regulating conflict of interest" in the subject line) and
regular mail (OSI/LGI; Nador utca 11, Room 310, Budapest, H-1051,
Hungary).

Deadline: July 31, 2002

Preferred countries are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,
Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Ukraine. Partners of the LGPP Program reserves the right to
accept or to refuse proposals and to limit the number of countries
participating in the project.