The administrative-territorial reform, which has yet to conclude either formally or in practice, was undertaken with a range of aims in mind. The changes can and should be judged from various angles: there are things that sound fine when spoken into a TV camera, and there are things that those not involved fail to grasp or do not even suspect. Even simply reading news headlines, without hunting down the local municipal papers, one notices that a series of important questions keep recurring and do not go away. Is anyone addressing them, who is, and why is it taking so long?
Last year many Latvian local governments reported financial difficulties and various ways of resolving them. At the same time, we heard proposals often enough from various sections of society that the state or the local authority might take on the funding of this and that as well, while other groups, in turn, proposed restricting various business activities. How should one judge a situation in which it is frequently the very same people who want the state and local governments to receive less money but spend considerably more?
I have worked in close connection with local governments for a good long time, but... as experience grows, it becomes ever harder to understand how people think and how they decide. Back when we took part in working groups organised by various ministries, I remember well how the discussions and arguments ran, what the opinions were – often opposing – and how views were exchanged, sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly; and in the end, if agreement was reached on something, you could clearly feel the result, which of course was not always favourable to local governments. But, for instance, I could confidently tell colleagues that I had done this and that; perhaps I was not heard or not understood, or the aims were different, but I could set out briefly and clearly why and in what battle I had lost. I also experienced situations where my reasoning made the others in the working group change their minds, because they understood why it would be more correct and more sensible.
Nowadays... if you take part in a working group, you are allowed to speak your mind, to explain, you are even urged to do so, and you speak, but... the hands raised in the vote back something else entirely. That creates bewilderment and a situation in which you understand neither the aims nor the point of what has been decided, nor where it is all heading. Perhaps the aims are so refined that few can grasp them. Since 4 May 1990 Latvia has not seen a situation like the one we had last year. Why? Until now local governments have never had less than 18...% of the state's consolidated budget at their disposal (at times it has even been 20% or more...). Last year local governments received just 16.2% of the total tax revenue collected in the country, which is very, very little. That is not normal!
On a visit to Ogre, the mayor of the municipality, Egils Helmanis, said that “the ministries take the view that local governments are over-funded”; by comparison, in Riga they say that the local authorities that lie beside water would do better to bathe in money than in the nearby lake or river.
The mayor of Ogre was surely quoting what the Ministry of Finance puts about and how the media often portray the situation. Local governments in Latvia are not over-funded. Representatives of the Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments, starting with its chairman Gints Kaminskis, show the relevant charts at practically every meeting and gathering, explaining the situation to anyone who will listen – namely, there is inflation, there are tasks delegated to local governments whose number has only grown over time and for which money has never been allocated, and there are the consequences of the municipal reform; belts in local governments have been tightened to the point where in many places everything that can be has been halted or wound up, pay levels are already causing serious problems in attracting specialists, and the specialists they do have are looking for work elsewhere.
The Ministry of Finance “pulls out” some figures or other that are not the product of careful analysis but are “something”... And that is enough.
Cutting posts, merging parish administrations and reducing working hours were austerity measures heard about across the whole of Latvia last year. Are you saying the Ministry of Finance did not hear about them?
It seems it really did not! I want to stress that at national level we have already forgotten about the regions, and now we are being forced to forget about them territorially as well – in every municipality there is a centre and there are more outlying places, which in the large municipalities, now, after the reform, must already be considered decidedly remote. In effect, the country's inhabitants who live in the countryside and not particularly close to the municipal centre are frequently left to their own devices. To my mind that is a frightening situation, especially if we take geopolitics into account.
Finances matter, but planning matters just as much. In the course of the municipal reform it was particularly stressed that there would be no backwaters within the municipalities. Serious attention was paid to that question.
Of course, it is not only finances that matter; a clear, strategic vision for the development of the territory in question is also very important, regardless of the size of that territory. I will be critical – we have no strategists in this country who can see and think about the future and about development. A situation like that frightens me.
I have heard the lack of strategic vision mentioned more than once in conversation as one of the reasons for the country's backwardness... It shows up more clearly in the noisier problem cases, when the so-called major projects seriously stall – for example, practically everything connected with the railways.
My personal view is that we have forgotten about “raising” stateswomen and statesmen. There are many very clever people in Latvia, but our electoral system has ended up in the wrong ditch. Given that a very small percentage of citizens (voters among them) are active in our political parties, if we choose our deputies – the people's representatives – only from party lists, then the representation of the population in the Saeima no longer really accords with the Constitution. Even if everyone entitled to vote turned out, they could only choose from what is on offer. And the offering is meagre. We do not know how to raise stateswomen and statesmen who would already have some experience in this field. Almost anyone (and this is still the case) who is popular, has a good haircut, is well dressed and says the right things to the audience in question can serve the purpose.
Matters of state are decided in a narrow circle, without discussion, and I would add that in the regions there is often no discussion at all, because those who do the discussing choose to go where there are more voters. I have no doubt that parties are needed in a democratic system, but... there is no clarity about who thinks what and who represents whom. When an elected deputy “wanders” from party to party within a single term, switching political direction from right to left and so on, that raises a great many questions. For instance – what is the political stance of a party that is already the third or fourth of a deputy's career? If a politician “migrates”, the voter has no idea what the person they elected represents at any given moment. If, say, some deputies were elected from parties and some from the regions, the discussion would to my mind be of far better quality. Why? There would be much more listening to local governments. As we know, municipal deputies are also elected from specific parties and, sadly, it is plain to see that politicians representing one and the same party in the Saeima or the Cabinet of Ministers and in the municipalities and state cities do not come together and discuss important questions.
A situation like this, which I do not recall experiencing before either, seems to have taken shape or begun after the recent municipal reform and during this (the 14th) Saeima – namely, there is a lack of discussion and of joint decisions. Those 16.2% of the consolidated budget spared for local governments, mentioned earlier, show me personally that the heads of local governments who are active in parties have to some extent been pushed out of decision-making. I do not know what goes on inside the parties, because I am not a member of any of them, but I can see that politicians have no scope to step over certain imagined lines; they neither know how to agree, nor do they agree, nor do they wish to agree on matters of common concern.
How are Green Deal issues viewed in local governments?
First of all, in Latvia we often say, as you did – “the green course”. Who set this course? In Europe they say green deal – a green agreement or a green bargain. When we go to see our neighbours – the Finns, the Swedes, and the Belgians too – they talk about an agreement.
On this point I very much want to commend the Swedes, because their ministries, local governments and employers' organisations have come together and agreed on how they will manage things greenly (I stress – manage!). That is what I would like to see in Latvia, and what I have asked at many meetings: “Why do we prohibit so much in Latvia?” Instead of thinking about how to manage, what we will gain and how we will work under the new conditions that someone has devised, we think about how not to manage, how to restrict, how not to act. Not managing wisely, but simply not managing at all!
Is not acting the easier option?
The easiest thing of all is when someone writes it all out for you. Why? The person carrying it out bears no responsibility, because “those people over there” who wrote it thought it all up. If I decide something, I answer for that decision. If someone else's decision and a set of Cabinet Regulations that read like an instruction manual are placed in front of me, I simply have to carry them out, with no room to manoeuvre, because any manoeuvres I might attempt are closely watched by a whole row of supervisory bodies ready to stop them.
But – it often happens that I can see clearly that I could reach the prescribed goal by another route, and do it faster and far more advantageously for the residents of my municipality. Opportunities of that kind are narrowing as time goes on. To my mind we are slowly moving towards an authoritarian state, because there is less and less room to manoeuvre.
For instance, if we say: “We will welcome anyone who manages wisely, who provides work and income and who thinks about future generations having just as good a life”, an appeal like that will appeal to many, but only a rare few will be ready to take responsibility for it.
If we are talking about forests, I have regularly sat on the judging panel of the competition for the best-tended forest, listening to forest owners' philosophy. I want to stress that word – philosophy – because forest owners do not compare compartments or stands, they compare management (philosophy). Forest owners think about the future, they are far-sighted, they live splendidly alongside landscapes and natural values. That splendid coexistence comes about through managing, not through prohibiting something. In preparing and planning various prohibitions, decision-makers or those who initiate decisions often spur or motivate people to act in ways they would not act in a normal situation. If 20, 50 or 100 hectares are simply taken away from someone's property, then understandably the owner very quickly does what they would not have done without that prohibition. Why do situations like this arise? There is an evident lack of strategic vision; in Latvia there is a lack of sensible agreements on a great many questions.
For instance, if we need to report to the European Union on nature protection, we have to do it wisely. To my mind we need to agree clearly on how we manage, so that things are good for the flower, for the clubmoss, for the bird, for the economy and for the state. We have values, and we know how to preserve them!
But as soon as we start discussing... I do not think any of the more widely known impassioned defenders of nature wish nature ill, but... first of all, they do not know how to talk to people or think in terms of cooperation; arguments break out in which nobody hears anyone else. The result is not good. Nor could it be otherwise.
What do local governments think about the green agreement (or course)?
Local governments manage, they learn, they educate themselves. For example, in the second half of last year there were four regional seminars on forest management, and there was also a three-day seminar in Estonia. We took stock, we were pleased that we manage well, and we sighed over how good the Estonians are at forming clusters, something we, in turn, fail at. We are ahead in forest management, but it has to be said that the Estonians have allowed the bureaucrats to interfere less in forest management; Estonian local governments manage their forests in the interests of their residents, whereas Latvian local authorities are not really allowed to. At the same time we cooperate more with scientists, while in Estonia there is more thought given to adding value to timber – making use, incidentally, of research by Latvian scientists too.
Before the recent municipal reform, small local governments in Latvia were not well enough off to employ a forester, and many forest-related management matters were dealt with by outsourcing – the success of that approach varied, and a great deal depended precisely on the people involved. At present almost every local government that owns more than 500 ha of forest employs specialists who understand and plan forest management.
I certainly want to recall the recent conclusion by the State Audit Office that local governments manage their forests badly... If you go out to deliberately selected “bad” compartments and draw conclusions on the assumption that things are like that everywhere, the assessment cannot in any way be regarded as sound. We are still arguing about this question both with the State Audit Office's representatives and with their consultants. In our view, one must not look at and judge the situation that way.
Naturally, we mention the recent municipal, or administrative-territorial, reform a great deal in this conversation. The accounts and experiences vary. In your view, is it already time to assess this reform seriously enough?
If we do the sums economically or mathematically, everything has a certain scale. Changing administrative boundaries and enlarging a territory does not always allow you to increase the economic scale as well. All of that could have been increased when local governments were smaller too. You can be master of your own land if you oversee it and know your territory well. Overseeing enormous territories properly is impossible, and consequently I believe that some local governments are in fact narrowing their boundaries; that is, I would allow that there are local governments whose boundaries in practice end at the municipal centre, at the town, not taking in the rural territory (essentially forgetting about it).
Speaking of municipal forests, had we been better at cooperating, cooperation in the forest sector would have developed more successfully and more solidly, and an agreement with the Competition Council and the Procurement Monitoring Bureau would have been reached long ago, so that we would understand how to proceed. At present there is still no such agreement (on cooperation). It should be remembered that in many cases a more advantageous procurement will be one for a larger volume and over the long term. We have not yet agreed on volumes and on the best model, because, as usual in Latvia, someone always thinks that in this particular case somebody is planning to steal something... And those who worry and think about that day in, day out also write the rules, in which they want to keep control...
In your view, does the talk about stealing carry over by inertia from the 1990s, or from an even earlier period?
It comes in waves. When I was still working in Umurga parish, we often laughed that the locals talked over every question at the milk stands, calling this form of communication milk-stand tales – “if it is like that at my milk stand, it must be like that everywhere”. Nowadays there are no more milk stands, but there are social networks, where some opinion appears and... spreads. A negative opinion has a tendency to spread fast. In the 1990s we joked that, as the collective farms collapsed, their employees were rather negatively disposed towards local governments, since these had supposedly taken their place; the collective farm chairman was no longer the number one person in a given territory, and so on. Local governments were very united at that time, we learned a great deal, and you could say that back then the heads of local governments (and not only they) completed at least a second degree. In those days parish elders joked about the distrust from the collective farm chairmen, saying that mad times had arrived, because you could not trust anyone and had to start suspecting yourself as well!
We feel something similar now. Local governments are being blackened thoroughly and without justification. I have never defended and never will defend any crook, but to make scapegoats of an entire sector and judge it that way because of, say, one incident or one person is neither clever nor right...
I know of more than one person working in some Latvian local government who feels wretched because someone has told them they have “joined that band of crooks”. That kind of attitude does nothing to increase faith in the state or in the future. What is meant to be achieved by such unfounded judgements? Do we want to bring ruin on our own country? I should think certainly not!
A little about land use. There are local governments whose representatives take pride in the fact that practically every square millimetre is used and worked, and there are places where you see areas overgrown with scrub and conclude that it is doubtful anyone has tended anything there.
Yes, such (untended and overgrown) areas still exist, and they are (still) a consequence of the land reform. As we know, part of the land was not allocated to owners and remained the property of the local government; these are mostly parcels that cannot be regarded as valuable. There are regions where there is a shortage of usable land, and there are those with a fair number of areas where one has to work out how to manage them. At one time the parcels that could be farmed intensively were snapped up very quickly, and large farms took shape in Latvia, which had a fairly substantial effect on how populated the countryside was. That, though, is for scientists to assess. I associate these developments to some extent with the previously mentioned inability to cooperate successfully and effectively. It should be remembered that a small farm finds it harder than a large one to sell what it has produced.
Local governments and afforestation – is that a live issue?
There are local authorities that have already got down to it. At present local governments are carrying out an inventory of land in order to establish what is left after the reform. If a parcel, for instance, cannot be used in any other way but adjoins the property of a decent farmer, they try to sell it; and there are compartments where forests are already being tended...
How easy is it to sell a “not particularly good” parcel of land to a neighbouring farmer? It should be remembered that it has to be sold at the best and most advantageous price.
Precisely – it is not easy! A large proportion of the unmanaged parcels are ones that good, conscientious farmers asked at the time to have “cut off” from their properties, because using those areas has to be regarded as inefficient. This would be the case where selling the land is next to impossible. It is another matter if the compartment lies between two or more properties and has no access road. That too is a consequence of the land reform; unfortunately, the State Land Service (VZD) created problems of that kind at the time. The Land Reform Law was very good to begin with – for example, in the countryside there could be no joint ownership (land belonging to one owner, buildings to another), every parcel of land had to have access, and if the owner of a building was unknown, the land had to be laid out so that the building had a functional yard (so that it could be reached by vehicle).
How was oversight carried out? When a surveyor came to the local government with the completed work, the local land surveyor compared it against the initial plan. It should certainly be remembered here that local people in the parish or town knew the territories in question well. For instance, I still know the boundaries in Umurga even now, because I remember well what we divided up and how.
What happened later? In 1996, when the active period of land surveying began, the state decided that local governments would not cope with oversight and supervision, and handed those functions over to the VZD. Nobody in the VZD office far from the parishes had any interest in checking and looking at the situation on the ground, and nobody asked them to. The State Land Service's work has not been of good quality in a great many places, and a great many comparatively low-value parcels were left without access in a great many places. Even now they are quite difficult to sell, while for local governments it is far from simple to work out what is on them or what to do with them.
It is another matter if beautiful birches have grown up on some half-hectare of ours, enough for us to call it a grove, but on paper it does not count as forest... Then you have to work out how to manage trees outside the forest. My feeling is that if the Forest Law is opened up, that could have unforeseeable consequences...
A live topic for the coming years – Rail Baltica, which in any version of the project will cross many municipalities, yet is only discussed in the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance... How serious a problem is cooperation between ministries in Latvia?
Even more serious, even more problematic than a few years ago. In the ministries, sadly, one department does not know what another is doing, and it has to be said that in many respects a good thing – remote working – has often had the opposite effect in the ministries.
I do not think this is Latvia's problem alone but rather – if I may put it this way – a very European thing: sectoral policy, where each sector works independently of the others, and not even the Cabinet of Ministers can do anything about that “independence”, including in situations where one ministry takes a stand against another. That is sad, and it is not far-sighted. Everyone needs to see what the others are doing.