Chairperson of the Subcommittee on regional policy, local budgets and municipal property A.Reka noted that the draft law No. 2174 offers amendments to Laws of Ukraine "On education," "On general secondary education," "On out-of-school education," "On preschool education," "On local self-government in Ukraine," "On priority of social development of rural areas and agricultural sector in national economy" to envision that reorganization and closedown of municipal general educational establishments is conducted under respective consent of respective territorial community.
According to the Main scientific and expert department of the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat, there are grounds to consider that the effective legislation already contains legal framework to settle the question raised by the draft law through by means of local referendum, thus, there would be no need to close down the said establishments under consent of respective territorial community.
Besides, the Main department draws attention to the fact that the amendments to Paragraph 2, Item 30, Section 1 of Article 26 of the Law of Ukraine "On local self-government in Ukraine" (Item 5 of Chapter I of the draft law) does not correspond to the object of regulation of this Article, which determines a number of issues settled only at plenary meetings of village, small town, and city councils.
The head of the Subcommittee informed that the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Combating Corruption had noted that the draft law was in line with requirements of the anticorruption legislation; the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Budget Affairs and the Ministry of Finance expressed concerns over the fact that the implementation of the draft law would retain small schools financed from the state budget with insufficient number of children.
Deputy director of the Professional Development and Legal Aid Center of the all-Ukrainian association of local self-government bodies Association of Ukrainian Cities V.Kravchenko said that the Association offered to reject the draft law as in opinion of the Association village, small town, and city councils were the local self-government bodies representing interests of the whole territorial community and therefore were authorized to tackle the issues of local importance.