Administration or development – 20 years of experience of polish local government financing

Abstract

The reform of local government from the organizational side has been completed. Nevertheless, the decentralization process is not. Local government units are entities of the public finance sector responsible for the implementation of established public tasks covering about 30% of all tasks. With this in mind, local government units should be provided with financial means to perform these tasks. The scope of financial autonomy of local government units is, however, diversified, depending on the adopted concept of its functioning. The system of financing local government units should be different if it is to ensure the adequacy of income to the scope of the tasks being performed,and otherwise if the local government authority is to bear responsibility for running its own development policy. It is impossible not to indicate that the more financial independence the more opportunities for development. The purpose of the article is to try to determine whether it is possible to talk about the risk of LGU financial independence.