Publicity in the Regulation of Municipal Services

Abstract

The article considers the publicity principle associated with legal control of municipal services. People’s trust in local authorities depends considerably not only on the quality of services, but also on the openness of their provision process and citizens’ awareness. Publicity covers these categories. The object of this work is to analyze a legal basis controlling publicity in providing municipal services. The research uses a system of general scientific and special juridical methods, including analysis, legal comparison, linguistic and legal techniques. The authors have analyzed the interpretation of the notion “publicity” by Russian scholars and their foreign colleagues who use the term “transparency” and elicited the elements of these principles. They distinguished general approaches to this legal phenomenon and defined differences. The analysis of acting legislation was carried out on the subject of the research. The authors referred to the confirmation of publicity principle at the local level. Special attention was paid to legal acts regulating municipal services at the local level, i.e. administrative regulations. To accomplish the stated objective the authors referred to the Russian and foreign legislation. Based on the research findings, the drawbacks were found in the acting legal control of publicity principle when regulating municipal services. To solve a legal issue the authors submitted acting legislation amendments based on the positive foreign experience of legal control of administrative regulation publicity at the local level. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s7p59