Article 129

1. The Procurator’s Office of the Russian Federation shall form single centralized structure in which procurators are subordinate to superior procurators and the Procurator-General of the Russian Federation.

2. The Procurator-General of the Russian Federation shall be appointed and dismissed by the Council of the Federation upon the proposal of the President of the Russian Federation.

3. The procurators of the subjects of the Russian Federation shall be appointed by the Procurator-General of the Russian Federation by agreement with the subjects.

4. Other procurators shall be appointed by the Procurator-General of the Russian Federation.

5. The powers, organization and the rules of the functioning of the Procurator’s Office of the Russian Federation shall be determined by the federal law.

Ø 2) What adjectives are used to describe a judge?

Ø 3) What professions in the sphere of law are given in the text?

Ø 4) Write a summary of the text.

7.3 The Reform of Local Government in Russia

Ø 1) Read the heading and the words from the text and guess what reforms this text is about: distinction, state, self-government, national. Regional, cities, districts, authority, inconsistency, responsibilities, in favor of, sufficient funding.

Ø 2) Skim the text and name the “signal words” that help the author to introduce a new idea, to develop the idea, to provide examples, to explain the idea, to make a conclusion.

(1) Article 12 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation makes a distinction between “state power” and “local self-government.” According to the Constitution, the institutions of the national government and the regional governments (oblasts, republics, etc.) comprise the organs of state power, while the institutions of cities and districts (“raions, ” roughly equivalent to counties in the USA) are not part of the state, but are organs of local self-government. Thus the Constitution accepted the distinction between state authority and local self-government. The greatest problem was though the inconsistency between the stated responsibilities of local self-government and its financial capabilities.

(2) The new law on local self-government was adopted by the Parliament in 2003. The adoption of this law seemed to mark a shift in favor of the governors. The law was supposed to assure municipal governments sufficient funding to enable them to satisfy the obligations that have been imposed on them.

(3) Nevertheless, some argued that the full implementation of this law would decrease the fiscal independence of local government and would also directly subordinate local governments to regional and federal bodies. Under the reform coming from the new law, income from local taxes would decrease as a share of total government revenue. Thus the mayors of cities still must rely on transfers of funds from the budgets of the federal and regional governments in order to try to perform the functions that are expected of them.

(4) Another issue arose that the implementation of that legislation would entail an enormous growth in the number of local governments in the country. Under the new law the number of “municipal formations” in Russia would increase from 11, 560 to 31, 298. Such a tremendous increase in the number of local governments would ensure sharp growth in the number of municipal officials and a substantial expansion of the need for financial resources to support the staff, facilities, and equipment of the new local governments.

(5) The proponents of the reform hope that the actual increase in costs resulting from growth in the ranks of municipal governments will not be overwhelming if existing facilities are used in many cases and most elected officials in the smaller settlements are part-time public servants. In some locales, however, expenses are said to have risen significantly as a result of the proliferation of local government entities.

(6) Whatever disadvantages of a new reform are, it’s obvious that it’s a step forward in the whole process of the reform of local government in Russia. While in the past the mayors had complained of a lack of attention from the central government, now there is confidence that the voice of the localities is finally heard.

Ø 3) Name the paragraphs which give answers to the questions below:

a) What document accepted the distinction between state authority and local self-government?

b) What consequences of the full implementation of the law could be foreseen?

c) What major advantages of e new reform are?