Budget transparency in Croatian local government units - employees’ views

This article presents a survey conducted among employees in Croatian local government units2 which may help in identifying the factors that promote (or hinder) local budget transparency. Despite the continued improvement in the budget transparency of Croatian local government units, the situation is still far from satisfactory.3 As the research so far has remained inconclusive about the determinants of local budget transparency in Croatia, the first step in this respect was to send out an online survey to establish the views of the public4, and then those of the county, city and municipality employees dealing with local budgets. Results of this second survey (the response rate for local government units was 42%) showed that the local government units were generally more satisfied with their levels of transparency than they should be, given the actual results. They believed that neither the public nor legislation required that they should publish more budget information. Moreover, the survey revealed inadequate administrative capacity and overload of other tasks in many cities and municipalities. Given that all the local government units have their own budgets, they should publish key budget documents transparently, if they want to provide adequate services to citizens. If they are unable to do so, the number, purpose and sustainability of current number of local government units should be reconsidered