APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7
A law of March 20, 1950 abolished the positions of voivode, starosta, and wojt and transferred their functions to the chairmen of the presidiums of provincial, district, and parish people's councils. In this manner the powers of the self-government agencies and those of the local administrators were fused, simplifying and formalizing effective party control over local government. It was, however, the law of 1954 abolishing parishes and creating rural (gromada) people's councils that ultimately led to the corruption, inefficiency and semi-paralyzation of rural local government.
In place of about 2,500 parishes, the 1954 law created 8,790 gromadas with people's councils and the average area within the jurisdiction of the lowest administrative units became correspondingly smaller. The statute reduced the powers of these units, transferring many of them to the district people's councils. As a result, a reform which was supposed to give "power to the people" in fact conferred on the district authorities the right to interfere directly in village affairs. The bill was originally designed to speed up the process of collectivization of the private farms, but preparation of the draft took so long that when the bill was finally passed the collectivization project had already lost its impetus. Only 2 years later, in 1956, the whole system of collective farms collapsed.
Between 1954 and 1972 the total number of rural people's councils decreased by about half, from 8,790 to 4,313. This reduction resulted both from the efforts of the regime to streamline local government operations as well as from the gradual but steady absorption of the lowest level people's councils by the next higher echelons as a result of urban annexations and general urban growth. As such consolidation progressed, the powers of the remaining gromada people's councils were even further reduced until their officials became virtually powerless and dependent totally on the district people's council for approval of every detail of gromada administration.
It is this situation that the Gierek regime seeks to remedy, spurred by general popular resentment against unresponsive and useless state bureaucracy at local levels, that was so much a feature of the December 1970 upheaval. The local government reform provides, therefore, for the replacement of the 4,313 gromada units with some 2,381 parishes (gmina), a move that is essentially a return in both number of rural administrative units as well as in terminology to the situation obtaining before 1954. The average parish area is generally twice as large as that of the gromada and its average population correspondingly increases to about 7,000. There are three types of parishes: the first and most frequent type is one whose area consists mainly of individual farms; the second is one in which state farms are in the majority; and the third is one whose area consists of non-agricultural land such as suburban areas and health resorts. The reform applies also to small towns of less than 5,000 inhabitants, which under the new system are fused into one government unit with the nearest rural parish. This move is designed to facilitate the integration of neighboring villages and small towns into naturally bounded economic micro-regions equipped with all locally needed economic, social, and cultural services.
The new parish councils consist of about 50 councilmen (as compared with 27 in a rural gromada) including at least one representative of each village. The parish councils took over from the district councils the funds which support parish activities. The parish councils and their presidiums have no executive managerial duties but concentrate instead on coordination, organization, and planning. Each council has four commissions: the first for agriculture; the second for problems of supply, budgeting, planning, building, and communications; the third for cultural and educational matters; and the fourth for questions of law and public order.
In addition to the parish council and its honorary elected chairman, there is a parish office representing the state administration and headed by a chief (naczelnik) appointed by the chairman of the provincial people's council. Notably, the educational qualifications for the post of the parish chief are significantly higher than those for the pre-1973 gromada officials. According to regime spokesmen, the parish chief is to be the central figure "in solving the problems of parish development and in satisfying the needs of its population." He will control agricultural services, prepare the drafts of economic plans and budgets, ensure that the people of the parish "discharge their duties," undertake "moves designed to strengthen and preserve public order," supervise the activities of organizational units subordinated to the parish council, and take charge of the registry. The essence of the reform, therefore, lies not so much in the reduction of the number of unit as in the return to a system of division of responsibilities between executive and representative authorities, a separation which was abandoned in 1950.
The single most evident unresolved problem of the new system is the still unclear manner in which local executive authority will be exercised in practice. The "parish chief" is appointed by the executive of the
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7
