The key to municipal reform is in city centres

Researcher suggests a growth corridor to link Helsinki and Tampere

The answer to the municipal reform question is to be found in large growth centres. Asko Uoti, who is the Acting Professor of Local Public Law at the University of Tampere, suggests alternatives instead of compulsory mergers.

One alternative is the growth corridor where municipalities in the growth areas can be joined together, for instance the municipalities between Helsinki and Tampere. The larger growth centres that have been hemmed in by the surrounding municipalities could find a new direction for their growth in the growth corridor.

“All surrounding municipalities should not be joined with Tampere, but economic incentives could be used to create a system that guarantees the development of the growth centres.”

According to Uoti, the area between Tampere and Helsinki would be a natural place to develop cooperation between the municipalities.

“The people of Lempäälä would of course oppose; they would not like to join Tampere. But if there were enough positive incentives and the merger agreement did not destroy the Lempäälä spirit, both Tampere and Lempäälä would benefit,” Uoti says.

The other municipalities around Tampere, such as Nokia and Kangasala, could remain independent, but they could join in later if they so decided. Uoti is not in favour of compulsory mergers.

In order for the growth corridor to succeed, the government should join the effort with large enough, specifically targeted economic incentives. Uoti believes that such an investment would turn out to be worthwhile.

“The corridor model is better than just making the municipalities merge headlong and seeing the final result only afterwards.”

Uoti offers the growth corridor model as one alternative that would help in the attainment of the fundamental goals of the municipal reform, such as taking care of the fiscal deficit. The large cities, such as Helsinki, Tampere, Turku, Jyväskylä, Kuopio and Oulu are in a key position.

A regional model is possible

Asko Uoti, together with his colleagues Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko and Olavi Kallio, has outlined a two-tiered regional and municipal service model. One example of such a model is the metropolitan administration of the greater Stockholm area where service production has been almost entirely allocated to council districts.

“We have a unique situation in Finland; it is as if we have lost our vision. We think that in the era of the European Union we cannot follow the Swedish example, even if their way of doing things is quite all right,” Uoti says.

Uoti would also like to have a range of alternative models which would make use of the existing municipal potential.

“We already have organisations for service provision and the decision-making structure is in place. We could make use of these and go forward with the division of labour, not with subordinate relationships.”

Uoti predicts that those municipal tasks that call for a large population base can be organised on the regional level which. The region could take the responsibility for organising other services, too, not just the controversial social and health services.

“When we talk about social and health services, we mean health services and specialised medical care. I would not like to mix things up as there are 535 other tasks in the municipal sector, some of which require special expertise and a large population base. We should guarantee the inhabitants’ participation and influence on both levels.”

Municipal mergers have not been assessed

The municipal reform goes on despite the researchers’ cautioning, without exploring the alternatives or mapping out the current situation.

“Now we have rushed headlong, like we must have 70 municipalities and down with everything old. However, there many good aspects in the old; well-functioning municipalities and good practices.”

Uoti remarks that it is unclear how the possibilities of participation and influencing were organised in the recent municipal mergers in Kouvola and Salo.

“Neither Kouvola nor Salo seem like very successful mergers. There has been no wider assessment of how these mergers have worked and what the good and bad sides have been. It would be very important to study this. One normally learns from mistakes, but now this alternative has not been used.”

Outsourcing the services increases problems with impartiality

Purchase agreements and outsourcing cause new problems in municipal decision-making.

“Things that compromise the impartiality of decision-making can come up if people are not careful,” says Asko Uoti, Acting Professor of Local Public Law.

Outsourcing and bidding for services can result in problems with impartiality in the case of those decision-makers who work for the municipality, but also those who work for the businesses that produce the outsourced services.

People working for the municipality and the service producing companies can influence the fact of whether there is outsourcing in the first place, how it is carried out and what the general conditions are.

“In these cases the bias and impartiality rules should be examined very carefully.”

Uoti remarks that not everything can be defined with the help of the impartiality provision in the Administrative Procedure Act.

“There should be lighter measures for fine-tuning, such as the voluntary application of ethical principles. We just need to have the principles first.”

Municipal councillors for a limited time

Uoti is ready to restrict the stipulation in the Local Government Act that only a half of the members of municipal boards can be municipal employees. At the very least, a municipal employee should never chair a municipal board.

Uoti also supports limiting the municipal councillors’ terms of office to two or three. The councillors should then stay out of the council for one term and do a comeback after that.

Representation would improve and elitism reduce by considering whether MPs should have a limited right to participate in municipal decision-making.

Does the state of democracy cause concern in Finland?

“I would not say concern, but we should be aware of the fact that we are way behind the other Nordic countries in voter turnout.”

Sweden had a nearly 82 percent participation rate in their local elections in 2010, when in Finland it is hard to reach 60 percent. The municipal reform can further alienate the voters. After the municipal reform in Denmark in 2007 the voter turnout was 10-20 percent lower than before.

There was a case in Sipoo where a candidate was illegally involved in counting the votes. Should we get the OCSE to monitor the elections in Finland?

“We do not have major problems in that area. The Ministry of Justice rewrote its guidelines on not allowing candidates to participate in vote counting. These guidelines could be made more airtight so that there would be no room for such temptations. Our system works in this regard,” Uoti says.