The Bogdanovich City Court (Sverdlovsk Region) satisfied the claim of the former mayor Vladimir Moskvin to cancel the results of the elections for the head of the municipality, which the local Duma held on August 3. On them, the deputies approved the mayor of Vladimir Golovanov, but the regional authorities declared the elections illegitimate and insisted that the competition was illegal. By a court decision, a new election of the head must be held within 10 days.
As Kommersant-Ural was informed in the Bogdanovich City Court (Sverdlovsk Region), the claim of the former mayor Vladimir Moskvin to cancel the results of the elections for the head of the municipality was satisfied. Recall that since August 7, the municipality is formally run by two mayors: Mr. Moskvin (held office since 2012) and Vladimir Golovanov, unanimously elected at a meeting of the City Duma on August 3 on the amended regulation on the election of the head of the city district. The amendments deprived the chairman of the tender committee (representative of the governor's administration) from the deciding vote and reduced the quorum for making a decision. The regional authorities did not recognize the new mayor and insisted that Vladimir Moskvin was the legitimate head of Bogdanovich. On August 18, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court declared illegal the decision of the Duma to amend, as a result of which a new head appeared in the municipality.
According to the chairman of the city district Duma, Vladimir Grebenshchikov, during the court session, the representatives of the Duma insisted that the changes in the election regulations and the elections themselves were legal, and the conflict was caused by a different interpretation of the law. “However, the court ordered the competition commission within ten days to hold a repeated stage of the elections with all previously announced candidates (nine people -“ Kommersant-Ural ”)," he explained. According to Mr. Grebenshchikov, the Bogdanovich Duma will appeal the court's decision, in which it will ask to increase the period during which a repeated competition should be held. “The competition commission will work on the amended regulation on elections. In my opinion, the commission, as before, will elect Vladimir Golovanov, ”added Vladimir Grebenshchikov.
Despite opposition from the team of Vladimir Moskvin (in the early days of the conflict he barricaded himself in the mayor's office and took away the seal for documents), Mr. Golovanov “ran the municipality in working mode”. According to his representative Ruslan Mironov, the elected head signed the necessary decrees and traveled to the government. “Statements of illegitimacy came from top officials of the government. Relations with the heads of the departments were normal, and working issues were resolved well, ”he explained.
Experts believe that such conflicts have ceased to be a rarity in municipalities due to the transition to indirect elections of mayors in the Sverdlovsk region (held since January 1, 2016). “The old guard leaves reluctantly, losing their commercial ties along with the authorities,” says Alexander Pirogov, head of the Pirogov and Partners consulting group. He notes that the regional authorities did not recognize Vladimir Golovanov as legitimate due to the fact that his candidacy was not coordinated with the governor's administration. According to the expert, the regional authorities have already held negotiations in Bogdanovich, therefore, the conflict will not repeat itself in the next elections.
Complete "Bogdanovich" Kuyvashev
Has the head of the Sverdlovsk region left everything to chance?
The scandal over the appointment of the mayor of the city of Bogdanovich in the Sverdlovsk region cannot be resolved. The situation developed in such a way that a dual power was actually formed in the city. That is, both the former mayor Vladimir Moskvin and the recently elected competition commission Vladimir Golovanov consider themselves city governors.
All the deputies of Bogdanovich's city council voted for Golovanov last week unanimously (according to the city charter). Moskvin did not receive a single vote and was effectively dismissed.
However, Moskvin showed temper and refused to leave the mayor's chair. The matter reached the point of absurdity. On the day of the proposed inauguration in such cases, he simply locked himself in his (it turns out, now former) office and did not let anyone there.
Golovanov's inauguration ceremony had to be held in the hallway of the mayor's office. Generally speaking, the story of the election of the mayor of Bogdanovich resembles nothing more than a theater of the absurd.
As it turned out, the composition of the competition commission in its half version should include representatives of the regional administration, that is, appointees of the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, Yevgeny Kuyvashev.
But Bogdanovich's deputies took and simply cut off the regional representatives from solving the issue. The motivation was as simple as a rake. They say that none of the members of the competition commission has ever appeared at its meetings.
As a result, the city parliamentarians at an urgently assembled session decided to simply exclude the Kuyvash delegates from the commission! As for the former (or is still the present?) Head of the city of Moskvin, he took up ... television. First, he released and distributed on the Internet a video in which he called the incident a real arbitrariness.
Vladimir Moskvin, one of the mayors of Bogdanovich
Or rather, he described the situation as an illegal seizure of power.
The prosecutor’s office seemed to agree with the illegality of the election of the mayor of Bogdanovich, which even issued an official ruling on this matter. But there are two mayors so far. The situation has entered a political and legal clinch.
In this situation, a reasonable question arises - where did the regional authorities and personally the head of the region Yevgeny Kuyvashev look? Does he not control the situation in his territories at all?
Probably not in control if he allowed a collapse in Bogdanovich, which has already reached the federal level. But, apparently, the governor today is busy exclusively with himself. After all, exactly in a month he will have to be re-elected himself.
And Kuyvashev rushed into continuous trips to cities and villages, rolling out future votes for himself. Only here in Bogdanovichi did not bother to call. Will the locals remember this in September?
On the whole, residents of the Sverdlovsk region can remember Kuyvashev a lot.
Stranger?
Evgeny Kuyvashev has a reputation as a Varangian in the region behind the eyes, or even in the eyes. He got to the Sverdlovsk region from Tyumen. Has been leading the region for 5 years. He supervised with interest. So, with the arrival of Kuyvashev, the debt has more than doubled (up to 50 billion rubles). And the budget deficit grew almost 20 times and amounted to 20 billion rubles.
At the same time, Evgeny Kuyvashev is famous for his high-profile projects. For example, at one time he engaged the grandiose Stolits program to help the regional center of Yekaterinburg. The program included the allocation of 20 billion rubles for the development of the capital of the Urals. But she only meant. In the end, Yekaterinburg did not receive a dime.
Local spiteful critics also accuse the governor of actually stepping back from solving the issues of housing and communal services, the state of which, to put it mildly, is deplorable.
The regional government simply shifted all the costs of maintaining housing and communal services to the meager budgets of municipalities.
A loud scandal erupted some time ago with the Yekaterinburg Koltsovo airport. From there, state shares worth several billion rubles almost floated away. The shares have already been sold to two Moscow firms, but at the last moment the deal was stopped.
It is hard to imagine that regional officials are playing billions of dollars in deals under the governor's nose, and he is not in a dream about it.
The state-owned enterprise Oblkommunenergo was also sold with a scandal. His shares were sold almost secretly, and were sold to well-known businessmen Artem Bikov and Alexei Bobrov.
And in the Urals, the secret of Polichinel is that the aforementioned gentlemen are old friends of Kuyvashev, who wander after him from region to region. Still not to roam, to eat accustomed to the governor's trough!
Attacks on Roizman
Yevgeny Kuyvashev became famous for the fact that he pedaled the conflict with a very popular politician in Yekaterinburg, now its mayor Yevgeny Roizman in every possible way. Kuyvashev clearly did not want Roizman to lead the city, but received a resounding slap in the face from the residents of the city. Roizman was elected mayor in direct elections.
Evgeny Kuyvashev, Acting Governor of the Sverdlovsk Region
Revenge came very soon. Roizman has officially announced his desire to run for governor, that is, to become a rival to Kuyvashev. It was impossible to allow this. And the opposition candidate simply could not pass the municipal filter.
After all, most of the deputies in the city Duma represent United Russia. Which pushed Roizman to the side of the election.
Until now, even the federal media relish the scandal with the property management of the Sverdlovsk region (MUGISO). His leadership is mired in corruption scandals. And its leader, Aleksey Pyankov, even ended up behind bars, from which he really freed himself. What's the bottom line? Kuyvashey reinstates Pyankov in office again!
But the story with the mayors of the city may enter into Russian analogues of the complete lack of control of the situation on the part of the governor's structures. This could cost Kuyvashev not only an electoral defeat.
This can lead to the fact that he will not live up to these very elections as acting governor.
It’s a paradox: the first governor elections in 14 years are underway in the Sverdlovsk Region, but the most interesting political events of recent days are not connected with the governor’s campaign, but with the small town of Bogdanovich, where they cannot elect a new mayor.
Photo from the official website of Bogdanovich
However, the word "choose" is not entirely correct. As you know, there are no more direct elections of mayors in the Sverdlovsk region. Heads of cities are either appointed or elected (the exact term for this procedure has not yet been invented) by the city duma, and the preliminary selection of candidates is carried out by a competitive commission, which is half of the governor's representatives, and half of the representatives of the city.
In Bogdanovich, the competition commission was formed at the beginning of 2017. The governor's representatives in it were the Governor of the Southern District Mikhail Astakhov, Minister of Public Security Alexander Kudryavtsev, Director of the Department for Local Self-Government Natalia Sokolova and Director of the Department of Internal Policy Anton Tretyakov.
Although the commission appeared in January, it was possible to elect / appoint a new mayor only at the beginning of August. Prior to this, the competition was repeatedly disrupted. And finally, 65-year-old Vladimir Golovanov was elected the new head of the city district, for whom the majority of the city Duma deputies voted.
But the story did not end there. The previous mayor, Vladimir Moskvin, refused to recognize the results of the competition and issued two appeals to the residents of the city, in which he stated that an illegal seizure of power had taken place in Bogdanovich. Moskvin was supported by the administration of the governor of the Sverdlovsk region and the regional branch of the United Russia party. The former mayor kept his office for three days, not letting in the new head of the city Golovanov. However, Moskvin then nevertheless left the administration building, but continued to consider himself the legal mayor.
The regional authorities are of the same opinion and insist on canceling the results of the competition. The issue of canceling the decision to elect Golovanov was twice submitted to the City Duma, but once the Duma could not collect a quorum, and the second time the deputies voted against.
Without going into all the details of this plot, we can state that there is an obvious conflict between the regional authorities, which support Moskvin, and the local elite, which relied on Golovin. And the regional authorities were unable to win this conflict by political methods. Neither pressure, nor persuasion, nor appeals from United Russia gave any result.
The political crisis in Bogdanovich can be called the first serious failure of the new team of the governor's administration, formed in 2016. It is obvious that one of the key tasks of the administration is the appointment of candidates loyal to the regional authorities by mayors. In the case of Bogdanovich, the team did not fulfill this task. In the bowels of the administration, there is probably a search for those responsible for the failure, and the entire internal political bloc is under attack - both the head of the department of domestic policy, Tretyakov, and the head of the department for local self-government, Sokolova (both members of the competition commission), and first deputy head of the administration, Vadim Dubichev. The political bloc is supervised by the head of the administration, vice-governor Vladimir Tungusov. The leaders of the Sverdlovsk "United Russia" party, including the head of the executive committee, Alexander Kosintsev, also attended the Duma sessions. But their presence had no effect either.
Supporters of the regional authorities, in turn, are also looking for the guilty. The most common version in the press is that businessman Sergei Maisel, who has business interests in Bogdanovich, is behind the election of Golovanov. Meisel himself categorically denies this.
But it would be wrong to blame all the blame only on specific officials, deputies or businessmen. Yes, they did not cope with their task - but this fact should not obscure the main question: why does the governor's administration generally appoint mayors of cities?
When the elections of mayors were canceled in the Sverdlovsk region, the regional authorities colorfully described how this would improve the situation with local self-government, how it would allow the election of effective managers to the heads of cities. But it was clear that the goal was completely different - to make the mayors completely loyal to the regional leadership. It was expected that the cancellation of the elections would be enough to completely subordinate the oblast municipalities.
As it turned out, this was not enough. It turned out that the appointment through a competition in itself does not guarantee against conflicts and crises. And if the local elite have their own interests, then a call from the governor's administration may mean nothing to them. The regional authorities have become hostages of their arrogance and self-confidence.
Politics without conflicts is impossible, even when it comes to politics in a small town. No matter how the higher authorities want to build everything into a smooth and even vertical, various groups of local elites will be at enmity with each other, they will try to gain control over the city in one way or another. This is inevitable, the question is what forms it takes. When regional authorities want to manage everything with the help of administrative-command methods, these conflicts turn into crises like the crisis in Bogdanovich. The system crashes and no one knows what to do.
Meanwhile, human history has developed an effective, if not ideal, way of resolving such conflicts. It's called an election. If there had been a mayoral election in Bogdanovich, then Moskvin and Golovin would have nominated their candidacies, one of them won, and the regional authorities would then work with him - either agree or try to get rid of him. Yes, that would require some political effort and talent from the governor's team. But regional officials would certainly not look as helpless as they do now.
There is one more point that few people pay attention to - the residents of the city. Nobody asks them at all who they want to see mayor. This is clear evidence of the complete degeneration of local self-government.
The crisis in Bogdanovich (which, by the way, is not over yet) can only be the first sign. The vicious system of appointing mayors will still make itself felt, and regional officials, deep down in their hearts, will more than once regret canceling the elections - but, of course, they will not admit it out loud.
Alexey Shaburov
The sudden appointment by Duma deputies to the post of head of Bogdanovich Vladimir Golovanov confused the representatives of the regional authorities. On the morning of August 7, the newly elected mayor tried to hold his own inauguration in the administration building, but he was not provided with premises for this purpose. Vladimir Moskvin, who, after the appointment of a new leader, was supposed to terminate his duties, continues to work in his position. He talked to the applicant for the post behind closed doors. Officially, Moskvin's secretary confirmed that the head is still in office, but does not comment.
Head of Bogdanovich Administration Vladimir Moskvin
Members of the competition committee, which considered the nominated candidates and made a decision on admission to the second round of the competition for Golovanov, are awaiting a city court hearing on the legitimacy of the election of a new mayor. According to sources of the publication, it is scheduled for August 29. Note that the commission itself was formed at the end of April.
“For a long time, she did not meet in full force. A few weeks ago, a group of deputies came up with an initiative to change the regulation on the election of the head by the commission, where four members are appointed by the Duma, and four more - by the regional authorities. They indicated that the body was competent to make a decision with four votes and deprived (the chairman of the commission, manager of the Southern Administrative District Michael) Astakhova casting vote. The head vetoed this decision, but the Speaker of the Duma refused to accept it on the basis of a 15 minutes delay in submitting the document. After that, the issue of the veto was included in the agenda of the next meeting, but it was also removed from the discussion, "a source told Pravda Ural Federal District in the City Duma.
The prosecutor's office of Bogdanovich reacted to the decision, sending to the Duma a proposal to eliminate violations related to the refusal to veto the head. The prosecutor's office, however, refuses to comment on the document or even clarify its official wording. Some MPs even doubt its existence.
“The head explained to me that the prosecutor’s office did not provide anything in writing,” the deputy said. Alexander Mukhachev.
His colleague Vladimir Gustokashin indicates that the document still exists and will be considered at the next meeting of the Duma on August 23-24. According to him, the amendments allowing the commission to select a candidate with four votes were supported by at least 14 Duma deputies. The deputy also believes that the reason is “the inability of the commission to meet in full”. The representatives of the competition authority appointed by the governor's administration have a different point of view.
“There is a procedure for the commission's work, the schedule and terms are determined by it itself. We worked on a normal schedule. There is a provision on the appointment of the dates of the commission meetings, which the deputies themselves adopted. It does not obey the Duma. The Duma is not a superior body in relation to the commission. The competition regulations do not imply the creation of a new commission. If the competition did not take place, it continues to work. Regarding the work, since there was no meeting, the commission did not take any decision. We are also waiting for a reaction from the prosecutor's office, "a member of the competition committee, director of the Department of Internal Policy of the Governor's Administration, told Pravda of the Ural Federal District. Anton Tretyakov.
Lawyers also question the legitimacy of the Duma's decision. According to experts, at present, judicial practice has been developed, according to which such decisions on the election of the head by the truncated composition of the commission are recognized as illegal. Mikhail Astakhov also pointed out in a letter to the speaker of the city parliament that the Duma was ineligible to consider a candidate chosen by only four members of the commission. However, in the second round of the competition, the deputies did not listen to this opinion.
“Out of 16 current deputies, 5 did not come to the meeting to select the head. During voting, 1 ballot was damaged. Another deputy sent a letter with a statement to vote in support of Golovanov. There are questions about this procedure, how legal it is to vote by letter. A few days before the vote, Golovanov was supported by only 6-7 deputies, but before the meeting, opinions changed dramatically, ”says a source in the City Duma.
As municipal parliamentarians note, the elections for the head of Bogdanovich have become protracted. In 2016, one competition for the selection of the mayor was already disrupted, where the current leader Vladimir Moskvin and ex-mayor Andrei Bykov were nominated. After that, Moskvin and Golovanov applied for the second competition. The last city parliamentarians consider Bykov's protege. Under his leadership, Vladimir Golovanov headed the financial department of the administration.
Former head of Bogdanovich Andrey Bykov
“Golovanov worked under Moskvin for about a year, then left. The confrontation between Bykov and Moskvin began almost immediately after the election of the latter. There were attempts to institute criminal cases against employees of the administration of the new head. The former mayor headed Bogdanovich for 3 terms. Moskvin decided to conduct his own financial audit of his activities, hired auditors who checked, in particular, the spending of funds for the reconstruction of boiler houses. 130 thousand rubles, which are now imputed to Moskvin as a waste, were just spent on auditors. But he is not afraid of the court - apparently, he has some kind of document that he can present in his defense, ”says a source in the Duma.
At the same time, the ex-mayor and the current head, according to the deputies, continue the confrontation in the electoral field - each of them in all constituencies has formed a group of candidates for the new convocation of the municipal Duma. Parliamentarians include colleagues among Bykov's supporters Vladimir Grebenshchikov, Tatiana Lakia, Victor Loskutov, Leonid Nokhrin, Gennady Levchenko, Vladimir Gustokashin... Among the deputies who support Moskvin are called Rudolf Kostromin, Alexandra Mukhacheva, Valeria Eredzhepova, Valentin and Boris Gourmet.
“Bykov is in dire need of forming his own majority in the Duma, since the option was being considered, in which Golovanov voluntarily relinquishes his powers, and the new Duma will re-elect Bogdanovich Bykov as head. He is also supported by a number of entrepreneurs ”, - the source of the publication in the Duma shares his vision of what is happening.
However, in the current situation, a new competition is unlikely to be appointed after the Duma elections. “In the situation that now arises, taking into account the active position of the deputies related to imposing their position on the commission, I consider it expedient to gather after the election of a new Duma and make a decision. The Duma stated its position at the meeting of a part of the competition committee and at the meeting when it elected Golovanov, ”says Anton Tretyakov.
The deputies of the regional Duma, familiar with legal conflicts, assess the appointment of Golovanov by the Duma as a desire "Bykov to play all-in." However, thanks to the prompt intervention of the prosecutor's office, the attempt to illegally change management in the municipality was suppressed. The regional authorities keep the situation under control.
"" Will continue to follow the development of events.