The Supreme Administrative Court
Repealed a Municipal Regulation On the
Ground of Not Being Put On Public Discussion

The Municipality of Burgas adopts acts without the required public consultation

Silvia Shatarova

The Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) repealed a Regulation on Movable Objects, Advertising and Information Activities of the Municipality of Burgas. The proceedings were initiated by the non-profit Burgas Association for Outdoor Advertising. With a decision No. 3249 as of March 11, 2010, the court ruled that the Regulation adopted in September 2008 should not be implemented. The decision is effective since its date of delivery and the permits for constructing and moving objects issued by the municipality before March 11 are valid. One of the grounds on which the court repealed the Regulation was that the act had not been put on public discussion, its draft had not been published 14 days before its adoption on the municipality web site as required by Art. 26, Para. 2 of the Law on Normative Acts.
 
Based on that, the SAC assumes that the principles of openness and publicity of the administration and the public access to information are violated. Such arguments can be presented in relation to other regulations of the Municipal Council as well. It is not acceptable that acts are adopted by piece, amended without grounded reports, and without being put on public discussion.

“The situation with the so called “blue parking zone” is the same. The draft proposal was introduced two – three days before the Municipal Council session on September 17 and discussed in haste,”Evgeniiy Mosinov, an attorney of one of the parties, said. 

The municipality claims that the Regulation had been published on its web site and on the web site of the Municipal Council, and that this is an established practice during the current mandate.

The SAC should interpret Art. 26, Para. 2 of the Law on Normative Acts because it is not clear who should publish the normative document – the municipality or the municipal council, as it is with the Council of Ministers normative documents or the ministries,”the secretary of the municipality Bozhidar Kanchev said.

In 2009, the Bulgarian Association for the Promotion of Citizens Initiative monitored the level of transparency and access to information in the Municipality of Bourgas. On the web site of the municipality, there is a section titled “Administrative acts”which contains: Laws and Regulations, Organizational Rules, Mayor’s Orders, Draft Regulations, Customer’s Charter, Ethical Code. There is a list of the issued normative acts as required by Art. 15, Para 1, item 2 of the APIA. The survey shows, however, that there is no data on the date of publication related to the draft regulations, nor when the administrative act came into force or was repealed. Furthermore, the web site of the Municipal Council becomes more and more complete – its decisions are published, as well as the agenda of the sessions with detailed texts under each point, a timetable of the sessions of the commissions.

In 2008, the Municipality of Burgas was proud that there was no request filed to the administration claiming that it was due to the openness and transparency of the administration. Unfortunately, the lack of registered requests stems from the lack of a register. The phone requests are not registered either.

According to the city ombudsman Tanio Atanasov, the future decisions of the administration should go under a public consultation process. The declaration of the administration that it has held a consultation is not enough. The opinions of the citizens on particular issues and the means by which these opinions were received should also be made public.

March 2010

This case is part of the book "Civil Participation and Access to Information (15 Years of the APIA, 37 stories of NGOs)" published by AIP within the implementation of the project “Enhancing the Capacity of Nongovernmental Organizations to Seek Public Information” supported with a grant under the NGO Programme in Bulgaria under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area 2009 – 2014 (www.ngogrants.bg).

The whole responsibility for the content shall be taken by the Access to Information Programme Foundaiton and it cannot be assumed under any circumstances that the document reflects the official stance of the  Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area and the Operator of the Programme for NGO support in Bulgaria.