Local authority reforms back on agenda next week

MPs next Thursday will start discussing the thorny issues of the proposed local authority reform after more or less agreeing on the rest of the provisions of three bills.

House interior committee chairman, Akel MP, Aristos Damianou, said next week they would delve into community mergers and referendums.

Damianou expressed satisfaction over the agreement achieved so far, noting that further convergences had been achieved during parallel talks between the union of municipalities, the union of communities, and the interior ministry.

The sides also seemed to overcome another thorny issue, that of revenue allocation, which had been open for quite some time.

Pending the decisions of the political parties, it has been agreed that 60 per cent of revenues from processing permit applications, approvals, and fees, will go to the local administrations involved.

“I must say that we remain on a good path. I would like to believe that we will continue like this to eventually be able to take three bills to plenum with the highest possible degree of agreement,” Damianou said.

The reform entails large-scale merger or clustering of communities and reducing municipalities from 30 to 17.

Several communities have already expressed disagreement over the merger plans.

It also provides for a single referendum to decide whether to go ahead though Akel supports having individual votes in communities.

The government initially disagreed with the notion of having referendums, but eventually agreed that if that would be the case, then there should be only one across the Republic and not many community-based polls.