Opportunities and prospects for self-development of municipalities

In most federal states the municipal level of government is not part of the system of state bodies. The issues concerning the development of municipalities should be addressed directly by the population and by the local self-government bodies that they form. However, after the reform of local self-government in Russia in accordance with Federal law 131-FZ “On the general principles of organization of local self-government in the Russian Federation” dated October 06, 2003 municipal entitites have not yet become completely independent in solving all issues and problems of local significance. The main underlying causes are the deficit of own revenue sources of local budgets and financial dependence on government bodies; inefficiency of the municipal territorial structure, because there are many municipalities with an extremely weak economic base for their development. Due to this, it is very important to find ways and tools to ensure the self-development of local territories, that is, the development mainly at the expense of internal resources. The purpose of the article is to assess the possibilities of self-development of municipalities (on the data of the Vologda Oblast), as well as the development of a mechanism for its provision. The paper shows that from the point of view of financial independence none of districts or urban districts of the Vologda Oblast can be called self-developing, since the share of own revenues (tax and non-tax) in the structure of revenues of their budgets in 2000-2015 was extremely low (less than 50%). The survey of heads of municipalities in the Vologda oblast, carried out in 2016, helped to find resources that can become factors of their self-development. A methodology for assessing the level of social and economic development of urban and rural settlements has been developed, which will allow to identify the most developed (actually self-developing) territories in which weaker village settlements can be included. The results of approbation of this method have shown that there is a significant differentiation of settlements, and the most developed is, as a rule, only one settlement around the administrative center of the district. The study proposes a mechanism for ensuring the self-development of municipalities, which includes forms, methods and tools for managing the development of municipalities and ensuring the implementation of this mechanism. Three variants of unification of settlements (on the data of Velikoustyugskii municipal district of the Vologda Oblast) are offered, that is practical relevance of the research. This article can serve as a basis for further research on this issue, concerning more detailed elaboration of certain forms and tools of self-development of municipalities.