- The salaries of municipal presidents and mayors must not depend on the population size of the local community they lead.
The Union of Municipalities of Montenegro has submitted to Parliament an amendment to the Proposal for the Law on Supplementing the Law on Salaries of Employees in the Public Sector, in order to correct the provision of the current legal text that prescribes the coefficients for calculating the salaries of mayors and municipal presidents, which has already been challenged before the Constitutional Court.
According to the challenged provision, the coefficients for the salaries of mayors and municipal presidents are prescribed within the range of 15.56 to 21.62, depending on the number of inhabitants in the local self-government. The Union of Municipalities of Montenegro assessed that a solution establishing different salaries depending on population size, despite identical duties, powers, and responsibilities in the most significant positions within the municipality, constitutes a serious violation of the constitutional principle of equality and equal treatment of citizens before the Constitution and the law.
We note that the president of the municipality is a single-person executive authority with the same competencies in every municipality regardless of population size, as well as individualized criminal, misdemeanor, material, and every other form of responsibility for performing the function. Therefore, the disputed coefficient for calculating his salary is not only unconstitutional, but also highly non-objective. This is because the coefficient of a municipal president in a municipality of up to 10,000 inhabitants is equated with the coefficient of a member of the Disciplinary Commission or the deputy chief of staff to the Prime Minister, while the coefficient of the president of a municipality with 10,000 to 50,000 inhabitants (17.29) is equated with the coefficient of an assistant professor at a university, noting that this coefficient is significantly lower than that of a specialist doctor or the secretary of the State Election Commission. Also, his coefficient in a municipality with over 100,000 inhabitants is equated with the coefficient of a scientific advisor or the president of the Administrative Court. This group also includes the coefficient of the mayor of the Capital City, which makes up one third of Montenegro,” it is stated in the explanation of the amendment.
The proposal of the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro is to introduce a uniform coefficient for calculating the salaries of mayors/municipal presidents regardless of the number of inhabitants, at the level of the coefficients used for calculating the salaries of ministers and members of parliament.
This is because the president of the municipality proposes and implements local policy across a large number of different administrative areas within the competence of the municipality, while a minister performs similar tasks within a limited number of their own portfolios. From this, it can be concluded that the president of the municipality has a broader scope of diverse competences compared to a minister, and therefore equalizing their coefficients is justified,” the explanation states.
Since the currently applicable law does not establish coefficients for other local officials and senior management staff, but instead they are determined on the basis of instructions from the Ministry of Finance, this amendment proposes the corresponding coefficients, thereby creating legal certainty, as it excludes the application of different instructions and opinions.
The amendment also contains a provision according to which the competent authority of a local self-government that is not able to secure sufficient funds for the payment of salaries in accordance with the law may reduce the coefficients by up to 20 percent.
The draft law is on the agenda of the Parliament session scheduled for 2 February, and in the letter sent by the Secretary General of the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro… Mišela Manojlović addressed to the President of Parliament. Andriji Mandiću it expresses the expectation that members of parliament will recognize the importance of this issue and, in accordance with their competences, propose the amendment that has been submitted to them.
