The city of Busan said on the 12th that Mayor Park Heong-joon attended the 9th Central-Local Government Cooperation Council at the presidential office in Yongsan, Seoul, and proposed ways to secure autonomy in local government finance following the expansion and overhaul of block grants.
Four agenda items that had been discussed multiple times, led by the Council of Governors and Mayors of Metropolitan and Provincial Governments, were submitted to the meeting that day. ▲ Plan to amend the Central-Local Government Cooperation Council Act ▲ Measures to promote fiscal decentralization for the realization of substantive local autonomy ▲ Plan to innovate national subsidies and strengthen fiscal co-governance between the central and local governments ▲ Expansion of local participation in government committees to strengthen the national-local cooperation system.
Participants discussed measures to strengthen fiscal co-governance, including ▲ adjusting the grant tax rate, which has not been raised since 2006 ▲ expanding local revenue ▲ expanding block grants.
Mayor Park said, "With the expansion and overhaul of the new block grants, projects that do not fit local conditions and rigid expenses have been transferred en masse, creating a paradoxical situation in which the share of autonomous investment projects by localities is actually decreasing," and added, "It is time to shift the paradigm of local government finance management."
He went on to say, "We should abolish the list of projects presented by the central government and shift to a negative-list approach of 'principally allowed, exceptionally prohibited' to pursue strategies that leverage the comparative advantages of each region."