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The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
25.06.2009. XXIX Session of the Tomsk Oblast State Duma 46 items on the agenda, including 29 bills.
At the beginning of the Session, Boris Maltsev, Speaker of the Tomsk Oblast State Duma, congratulated Vladimir Zhidkikh, member of the RF Federal Assembly Federation Council for Tomsk Oblast, on defense of a doctoral thesis in the Institute of Socio-Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences and on conferment of a PhD degree of in political science.
The Oblast Duma approved the amendments to the Tomsk Oblast Law "On vesting local authorities with special state powers in social support for orphans".
By the second reading the wording of the Law was refined with respect to comments announced at the Labor and Social Policy Committee meeting. Local governing bodies were authorized to provide social payments to graduates of municipal and non-state educational institutions among the orphans. Coordination and methodic support will be ensured by the Department of Family and Children Affairs of the Tomsk Oblast Administration (before that the payments were made by the Education Department). The number of such graduates in 2009 is 427. The Oblast budget allocates 13.8m rubles for this purpose.
The Tomsk Oblast Law "On social support for physically challenged people in Tomsk Oblast" was amended in its second reading to regulate accessibility of urban and rural infrastructure for the disabled.
At the previous Duma Session, the deputies voted for the Law to be supplemented with a list of infrastructure objects to be equipped with special facilities and equipment. Besides, the deputies were dissatisfied that the bill did not provide for any means of law execution control. They proposed to establish a special group to refine the bill.
At the next stage of law implementation the local authorities will develop legal acts, defining specific procedure for the authorities to exercise control over availability of access to the certain facilities to the disabled people. Local authorities shall complete this work within three months.
The Oblast deputies approved the report of the Tomsk Territorial Mandatory Health Insurance Fund 2008.
On the whole, in 2008 the Fund budget was executed with revenues amounting to 4.785bn rubles, 19.4m rubles were earned in excess of the plan. Expenditure budget execution totaled 4.804bn rubles. During the year, financing was provided to the territorial program of mandatory health insurance, federal pilot project aimed at improving the quality of the public health services, provision of medicines to certain categories of citizens, as well as the national project “Health”. Moreover, during the reporting period the Fund was active in protection of citizen rights in the mandatory health insurance system, as well as in auditing. In comparison with 2007, the Fund budget revenues increased by 19.7 %, expenditures – by 20.8 %.
The Tomsk oblast Administration reported to the Duma on the Oblast state unitary enterprises activity in 2008.
Today the authorities’ policy is targeted at optimizing the state economic sector and reducing the number of the Oblast state unitary enterprises. As of January 1, 2009 there were 23 enterprises with 18 acting and most of the rest undergoing bankruptcy proceeding. Among the acting enterprises 16 are road repair and construction departments, the Oblast Pharmaceutical Warehouse and Tomsk Oblast Center for Technical Inventory.
The total proceeds from the sale of goods, works and services of the Oblast state unitary enterprises in 2008 made up 2192.3m rubles or 118.6 % to the proceeds of the enterprises acting in 2007. Net profit amounted to 67.9m rubles or 90 % of profit of unitary enterprises acting in 2007. Three enterprises completed 2008 with losses. Under the law, the Oblast state unitary enterprises shall pay 10% of their profit to the budget. Thus, the sum of the profits (after payment of taxes and other mandatory payoffs) transferred by the Oblast state unitary enterprises to the Oblast budget in 2008 made up approx. 11m rubles.
In 2009 the major activity will be taking measures to reorganize the Oblast road industry enterprises.
A report on the results of control and disposition of Oblast public property for 2008 was approved.
As of January 1, 2009, there are 294 organizations in Tomsk Oblast which are established on the basis of or using the Oblast public property. Most of them are social institutions. In total, the institutions spent 6622.8m rubles in 2008, which is 31.8 % more than in 2007. Their activities were 69% financed from the Oblast budget, almost 10 % came from the allocated funds of the federal budget and approximately 20 % were the revenues of the organizations themselves. The Oblast public institutions employ 18,150 people whose average salary increased by 17.1% in comparison with 2007.
Tomsk Oblast owns shares of 27 joint stock companies with total face value 541.9m rubles and interests in the authorized capital of six limited liability companies with face value 14.9m rubles.
Amendments to the Oblast Law "On development of small and medium business in Tomsk Oblast" were adopted in the first reading.
The similar federal law provided regions with a right to approve types of material support for small and medium business entities, namely concessionary lease. The amount of concession is proposed to make 50 % of lease payment market value and maximum term of concessionary lease of property – 5 years.
Besides, regions have a right to independently determine the procedure for formation and compiling of the list of social activities for small and medium businesses counting on concessionary lease, as well as procedure for compiling of the list of state and municipal property which will be leased under concessionary terms. The deputies reserved this right for the Oblast Duma.
During the Governor's Hour, Sergei Tochilin, Deputy Governor for Special Commitments, reported on the progress of construction of the nuclear power plant in Seversk. With emphasis placed on advantages and importance of the project for energy security of Tomsk Oblast, Sergei Tochilin answered numerous questions of the deputies.
Vladimir Korotkevich expressed his concern that construction and installation works at the Seversk nuclear power plant might be postponed due to federal budget funds deficiency. For example, Rosatom is currently revising all investment programs and forecasting reduction of financing by 30 %. According to Sergei Tochilin, Rosatom decided to allocate funds for construction of only two power generating plants in 2010. The first is the Baltic power plant, and the second will be selected out of three – Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod or Seversk. Tomsk Oblast intends to advance interests of the Seversk plant. As the Deputy Governor underlined, in case of success the Oblast will construct the nuclear power plant even one year faster than initially planned.
Anatoly Kobzev asked the deputies to thoroughly study the prospects of parallel development of two most important projects in Tomsk Oblast – the Special Economic Zone of technical innovation type and nuclear power station. What if the nuclear plant will be hampering investments in the SEZ?
According to Alexander Uvarov, the attitude of Tomsk city and Oblast citizens to the nuclear plant will improve after they are provided with commercial insurance for accommodation guaranteeing reimbursement of the accommodation cost in case of an accident at the nuclear plant. The issue of property retaining is very important: expensive accommodation in case of an accident can go down in value to zero.
Sergei Tochilin answered that currently a bill is being developed on the federal level to insure citizens against nuclear risks. However, the progress is very slow. The main obstacle for bill passing is that the amount of insurance payments in case of possible accident is so high that no insurance company in Russian can cover it.
‘However’, said the Deputy Governor, ‘as soon as we have a relevant federal law, we can speak of insuring nuclear risks of Tomsk citizens’.
Sergey Tochilin assured the Duma that the infrastructure, if not the nuclear facility itself, will definitely be built by local construction companies which, he said, have ‘high performance potential.’
Ivan Kucherov expressed a wish to learn more not only about the positive aspects of the nuclear project but also negative. Boris Maltsev shared the idea.
‘I personally was involved in construction and start-up of three nuclear power plants and I am well aware about the specific features of such projects. However, when I hear endless praises about the Seversk plant even I start questioning its safety. … it’s a grand object and the people of Tomsk Oblast want a grand discussion over it! While telling about the advantages of the nuclear power plant, the authorities must not neglect the dangers it conceals and the measures to prevent accidents. People are primarily concerned over the risks and actions taken to avoid them!’
In the second and final reading the deputies adopted The Anti-corruption law of Tomsk Oblast. The Law defines basic notions such as ‘anti-corruption monitoring’, ‘anti-corruption expert review of regulatory acts of Tomsk Oblast and their bills’, ‘corruption-generating regulatory acts’, ‘corruption-generating factors’, and ‘corrupt practices’. The Law reflects the up-to-date federal and regional legislative anti-corruption practice.
A bill "On museums and museum management in Tomsk Oblast" was adopted in the first reading as a regulatory framework for preservation of precious museum pieces.
Tomsk Oblast is the first Russian region to pass such a bill. The document lays down the powers of the public authorities of Tomsk Oblast related to museums and museum-keeping, decision-making on creation, restructuring and liquidation of regional public museums, provision of safety guarantees for museum pieces and collections. The bill also defines the scope of authority regarding procedure of granting reduced rate benefits to certain categories of the population visiting the regional public museums. For the first time regulatory framework is created for guarding, maintaining, and managing open air museums, country house estates, memorial museums, etc. Such issues as creation and keeping of registers of museums and museum-type institutions in Tomsk Oblast; registration of museum pieces and collections and cultural valuables; creation and maintenance of a Catalogue of museum pieces, collections and cultural valuables, are now also regulated by the law. Currently, there are over 70 functioning museums in Tomsk Oblast. Most of them are corporate and municipal museums, and two of the institutions are regional museums with six branches.
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