earticle

영어

Ever since the restoration of the government’s local autonomy, public services have been provided with limited power and resources. The financial structure, giving too much emphasis on the central government, where the ratio of national-to-local taxes is 8 to 2 (8:2) and that of national-to-local expenditures is 4 to 6 (4:6), has developed the domestication of the local finance as well as the excessive expansion of government subsidies. Likewise, the quantitative size of local finance has increased in appearance, but the qualitative size has decreased because the size of local finance is closely related to government subsidies. As the central governments participates in local policies with subsidies, the local government simply act as the agent of the central government. Moreover, expanded welfare policies related to policy commitments lead to fiscal pressure on local governments. In other words, welfare finance and local finance are inversely related. While the increase in welfare finance creates difficulties in local finance, a requirement for indiscretionary expenditures is necessitated within a structure where local governments increase local matching fund as much as welfare-related government subsidies increase. Such control is done by central government's preoccupation of legislation, which is "unfunded mandates," so to speak. Accordingly, the expansion of block grants, the enactment of unfunded mandates and the modification of other regulations, the foundation of local finance association, the establishment of local level project expenseforecasting organization, all need to be considered as alternatives.