Compensation for additional expenses to local self-government bodies performing public functions

This paper examines the main problems of determining the procedure for compensating additional expenses to local governments when performing public functions in connection with the adoption of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020 and changes in federal legislation. It examines the history of the issue of compensation for additional costs to local governments and the problems associated with it over the past thirty years. It is noted that with the adoption of the Federal Law on Local Self-Government in 2003, the provisions on compensation for additional expenses incurred with the participation of local self-government bodies in the implementation of decisions taken by public authorities disappeared from federal legislation.

The paper traces how the institution of compensation for additional expenses incurred with the participation of local governments in the implementation of decisions taken by public authorities has changed. How did it turn into an institution for compensating additional expenses to local governments when performing public functions? The author notes that the provisions on this compensation are present only in article 133 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and are still absent from federal laws.

The article presents the main differences between the mechanisms of pre-financing when providing financial resources necessary for the exercise of transferred individual state powers and the subsequent compensation of additional costs to local governments in the performance of public functions, as well as other problematic issues of the mechanism of compensation of additional costs to local governments in the performance of public functions.

These issues are considered in the article using the formal legal method, methods of comparative legal and historical analysis of federal laws governing the compensation of additional costs to local governments, as well as synthesis in the preparation of conclusions and proposals based on this analysis.

Summing up, the author notes that there has never been, and never will be, a procedure for compensating additional costs to local governments when performing public functions in federal legislation! No need to raise the dead! Otherwise, this compensation mechanism will negate all the positive work on the division of powers between the levels of public authority and the establishment of an effective mechanism for granting local governments separate state powers that we have today.

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