Budget transparency in Croatian counties, cities and municipalities (November 2015 – March 2016)

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a budget transparency analysis for local government units in Croatia, measured by the number of key budget documents published on their respective official websites in the period November 2015-March 2016. The five key documents include: the 2014 year-end report, the 2015 mid-year report, as well as the 2016 budget proposal, enacted budget and citizens budget. The analysis takes into account only the documents available in the relevant period on the days of examining the official websites, while subsequently published documents are excluded. According to this methodology, the level of transparency can range between 0 and 5. Despite being unsatisfactory, the overall average level of budget transparency in local government units improved from 1.75 in the previous to 2.35 in the current research cycle. Counties are very transparent (4.3) on average, while cities are lagging behind (3.05) on average and municipalities are distinctly non-transparent (2.04 on average). Although as many as nine cities and almost a fifth of municipalities did not publish a single document, it is encouraging that: nearly half of all local government units published a larger number of budget documents than in the previous research cycle; that the most transparent local units also include relatively small and poor ones; and that some of the relatively small and poor municipalities have welldesigned and easily searchable websites. The analysis results for all counties, cities and municipalities are presented below and can also be further examined on the interactive map.