The buildings that house local governments are becoming more and more extravagant. The new city hall in Yongin, Gyeonggi province, currently under construction, is supposedly going to be the same size as the Central Government Complex on Sejongno in Seoul. You just do not know what to make of it. When you think of how most governments are fighting massive debt, it is enough to make you question the mental stability of local government heads, legislatures, and city councils. Some of them are using the loopholes that exist in legal ordinances and the law that prohibits governments from building buildings larger than they require to actually compete against other governments over who has the fanciest buildings.
The Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affair is the responsible for oversight, but its mild response to the situation is largely responsible for things coming to this. It adopted a new ordinance to the Regional Finances Law in September 2001 in order to halt the competition over who builds a fancier building, so it was long ago that it realized the situation was serious. The ministry that at that time it began requiring that any new building housing a local government that had a price tag of more than W5 billion had to have a review of the project's legitimacy by an outside agency, but that requirement was too lax. Governments used that procedure as a way to justify their construction projects instead of to certify their projects legitimacy, and when you see that you feel angry at the ministry's lazy response.
Immediately after the start of autonomous local government in 1995, some elected leaders were so radical that they shut down their official residences and moved into rental apartments. When that happened local voters were able to feel the effects of local autonomy. Now we are entering the 10th year since local autonomy and the civic awareness of local voters has grown considerably, but the construction of these "luxurious government buildings" has to be called a regression of grassroots democracy. The Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs needs to hurry with the implementation of measures that are effective, and local voters need to push for the adoption of ordinances that would allow them to stop the construction of overly luxurious government buildings. That is the strength of local autonomy.
The Hankyoreh, 10 May 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Citizens Must Block 'Luxurious' Gov't Buildings |
