The National Assembly passed the draft Law on Organization of Local Government as amended on the morning of February 19. After being accepted and revised, the draft Law submitted to the National Assembly has 50 articles, keeping the number of articles the same, but there has been a revision at 41 50% compared to the draft Law submitted by the Government to the National Assembly at the beginning of the session.
Article 2 of the Law regulating the Organization of local government in administrative units stipulates that local government in provincial, district and commune-level administrative units is the local government level, including People's Councils and People's Committees.
In case the National Assembly has regulations on not organizing local government at a specific administrative unit, the local government at that administrative unit is the People's Committee.
Local government in rural areas includes local government in provinces, districts and communes.
Local government in urban areas includes local government in centrally run cities, districts, towns, cities under provinces, cities under centrally run cities, wards, and towns.
Local government in a special administrative - economic unit shall be regulated by the National Assembly when establishing that special administrative - economic unit.
The Ministry of Home Affairs previously proposed not to organize People's Councils at district, ward and commune levels under urban areas nationwide, instead maintaining only the People's Committee operating under the head of administration mechanism, directly under the People's Committee at higher levels. According to this proposal, the Chairman and Vice Chairmen of the People's Committee will be directly appointed by the Chairman of the People's Committee at the higher level. However, before submitting to the National Assembly, this content was withdrawn from the draft law.
At the discussion session in the hall of the 9th Extraordinary Session, explaining the opinions of National Assembly deputies, Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra said that the Government proposed to keep the current model of local government organization to " avoid shortcomings in operation", because we are evaluating the overall organizational model of the entire political system and will continue to make adjustments.
The Law on Organization of Local Government (amended) was issued to create a legal corridor for agencies and organizations in the state apparatus after the reorganization to come into operation, ensuring effectiveness, efficiency, unity, synchronization, meeting new development requirements; at the same time, overcoming some limitations and shortcomings of the current Law.
The goal of developing the Law is to fundamentally, comprehensively and reasonably amend regulations on the organization and operation of local governments to fully concretize the provisions of the 2013 Constitution and institutionalize policies and orientations in the Party's Documents and Resolutions to continue to innovate local governments in the direction of promoting decentralization between state agencies at the central level and localities, organizing a streamlined apparatus, operating effectively and efficiently, ensuring the unity and smoothness of the state administration from the central to the grassroots level.
