Car Purchases: will officials banned to live beautifully?

November 14, 2014 19:42

The subject of unreasonably expensive cars of officials remains relevant already not for the first year. Last autumn parliamentarians made an attempt to enter the relevant procurement price limits, but it was not successful. The authors of the bill, Olga Timofeeva, Vyacheslav Lysakov and Victor Klimov suggested to limit the cost of cars for employees of the state apparatus up to 3 million rubles. In late November, the document was adopted in the first reading, but there was no further development of the story.

In October of this year, the situation would seem to headway. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a government resolution that sets the marginal costs of civil servants, including transportation. According to the document, federal authority officials and their deputies have not more than 2.5 million rubles, while the heads of structural units — only 1.5 million for the purchase of one service vehicle.

Despite the changes in the legislation, the tendency of officials to unwarranted spending does not disappear, and that it requires drastic measures. Recently the State Duma Deputy Vadim Solovyov said that he was preparing a project on the introduction of new cost limits for the purchase and rental of office cars. According to him, the federal budget can allocate not more than 2 million rubles on the most expensive official car, the same amount is defined for the annual rent. It includes all expenses for gasoline, maintenance, parking and driver salary.

Commenting on the initiative, Solovyov talked about the catastrophic shortage of funds in some regions. "Buying expensive cars in a crisis when there is not enough money for a quality solution of the primary issues of housing and social services, is a crime", said the official. Also, he cited the example of the Soviet practice, when the trademark of official car and, accordingly, its price depended on the position occupied by a civil servant.

It is worth noting that the understanding of the need to reduce costs for the purchase of official vehicles gradually comes to some local officials. So, the governor of the Ulyanovsk region Sergey Morozov issued an order according to which the maximum permissible value of a car for officials of a higher rank in the region is of 1 million rubles, and for officials of a lower rank — 700 thousand. Unfortunately these documents are rather an exception and counter-examples of procurement policy prevail now.

One of the last examples is the tender of the Moscow Department of interregional cooperation, national policy and relations with religious organizations. According to the documentation, its Head plans to rent a business class car for one year, for which he is willing to pay about 8.5 million from the budget. A similar but more ambitious order was recently placed by the department of territorial executive power. Its managers and employees are willing to spend on the rent of several high-class cars about 20 million rubles.

Of course, such requirements could not fail to attract the attention of checking instances. In particular, they interested the chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee Kirill Kabanov. He prepared two written appeals to the mayor with a request to check the orders to the relevant procurement legislation.

Will all of the taken measures be an effective tool in the fight against unreasonable budget spending? It would be so desirable to obtain a positive answer to this question right now, but only time will put an end to the situation.