average population of rural communities (vald), renamed village soviets in most cases, is
about 2500 inhabitants (when excluding cities).
Well, if the comprehensive plan is ready, it does not mean much because of the lack
of finances on the community level. Only 16 local self-government out of 247 manage with
own revenues in Estonia (!). The rest of communities are dependent on state subsidies,
especially when we speaking about “hard investments” in CI.
To a certain extent, county associations of local governments influence
development and planning activities on the county level. In 1994-1999, county governor
and associations of local governments decided jointly distribution of the part of state
investments, under so caller regional state investments programme. This is not the case any
more - decisions about the CI investments are now only made by ministries or by the
central government directly.
The associations of ol cal governments are working in very different manner in
Estonia, but in general, there is too few co-operation going on between communities. The
idea of joint action and collaboration has not arrived yet.
The Planning and Building Act passed in 1995 (http://www.envir... 2002), has is in
great deal copied from the Danish law. Denmark has two tier decentralised self government
system, where development and land use planning is carried out also on the county level.
Similar regulations cannot be effective in the situation of very centralised administrative
system of Estonia. Well, the Estonian system is gradually learning from the Nordic model
and more and more positive cases can be given. Also state authorities are looking for
locally defined priorities before making investment decisions. But it takes time.
In real life, because of permanent lack of financial resources, investments into the
local CI are overwhelmingly dependent on lobbying in the ministries and in the national
political structures, which in own turn influence ministries and budget formation. A good
mayor should be permanently “on the wheels” between the community and the Capital city.
Mayors qualification is measured by investments he/she brought to the community. For a
mayor, lobbying is definitely more important than planning. Yet.
Past collective farm practices continue therefore their existence within a new
communal system. The reason of preserved status quo in the CI development is sometimes
very simple: collective farm leaders just continue their “career” on mayors’ posts. The
share of old leaders has increased during the last years (Laustam 2002). As the activity of
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