Odesa ranks among the leaders in an anti-rating of accountability for municipal authorities.
Odesa was included in a list of cities with the lowest level of accountability to authorities, according to a study by Transparency International Ukraine's "Transparent Cities" program. The city council received 24 out of a possible 100 points, which is the second worst score among the 11 cities studied.
Odesa once again demonstrated a low level of accountability from its municipal authorities, ranking second to last in the "Transparent Cities" program by Transparency International Ukraine. Overall, the municipal councils that participated in the study are fulfilling accountability requirements at an average of only 43.3%.
Analysts assessed 11 city councils based on 40 indicators, including reports from city heads, disclosure of documents, communication with residents, and access to public information. Odesa scored 24 out of a possible 100, placing second only to Kharkiv, which received 14 points. Luts'k (68), Zaporizhzhia (60), and Poltava (58) received the highest scores, while Khmelnytsky scored 29 points.
Researchers paid particular attention to the lack of communication between the city authorities and the community. On the websites of 11 cities, only 53 news items related to annual reports were found, and another 44 were published on social media. However, no such news items were found on the websites of Odesa, Kharkiv, and Kropyvnytskyi. Open meetings with the community were held only by the leaders of Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, and Poltava, but none of them ensured the simultaneous fulfillment of all three conditions: advance announcement, publication of a written report, and publication of a video recording.
The head of the "Transparent Cities" program, Olesya Koval, emphasized that formally publishing documents is not sufficient to ensure accountability for local authorities. "Simply publishing a report somewhere in the corners of a website is not accountability. Local authorities cannot communicate with the public solely through documents. People need to understand how funds are being spent, why certain decisions are being made, and what results the city has achieved," she noted. As a result of the study, the "Transparent Cities" program prepared individual recommendations for 11 city councils, as well as developed a self-assessment tool for other communities.