Six regional centers and four cities are among the top ten most transparent cities of Ukraine. The leading cities are Lviv, Kropyvnytskyy, and Ivano-Frankivsk. Dnipro and Poltava are at the end of the rating list. They scored less than 30 points out of 100. Only 5 cities scored 51 to 60 points. These are the results of the second stage of the study on transparency of cities. “In fact, we can state that even the leaders meet the transparency criteria by 50% only”, – said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Executive Director of the Transparency International Ukraine, during a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
A total of 100 cities participated in the study. Yaroslav Yurchyshyn stressed that there is no connection between the regional center status of the city and transparency level. “For example, Nizhyn and Kremenchuk are way ahead of their regional centers”, – added Mr. Yurchyshyn.
Oleksandr Solontai, Chief Analyst of the project “Building transparency of cities”, added that the study results showed that the smaller the community, the lower the transparency level is. Mr. Solontai explained that the latter in most cases happens because these communities are only at the forming stage and they do not have sufficient resources to provide the necessary level of transparency and openness yet. “Out of 100 of the biggest city councils, we only have two united communities. These are Lyman and Dunayivtsi. The rest of cities did not undergo the process of merging and expanding. […] Both communities are at the end of our ranking list. […] Communities have united, […] but they just do not know how to work within the current legislation”, – said the analyst.
The cities were rated on 3 criteria. These are the implementation of the current legislation on decentralization, introduction of best practices on the basis of the current legislation, and the effectiveness of local authorities in fighting corruption. “The criteria are designed in such a way that local authorities upon receiving our methodology, can work on their transparency and openness level themselves”, – said Oleksandr Solontai.
In the areas of housing policy, social policy and municipal enterprises all cities showed the worst results. “We are ready to provide assistance, because for each indicator we have collected the best practices from Ukraine”, – added Mr. Solontai.
Yaroslav Yurchyshyn noted that in 15 cities they will conduct a special training on how to increase transparency and efficiency levels. “Also, we will support, in terms of both organization and resources, 15 organizations or initiatives in different cities, which will propose their projects on how to improve the performance of their city”, – added Mr. Yurchyshyn.
