지방재정위기와 긴급재정제도의 도입에 따른 쟁점검토

Abstract

Even it has been more than 20 years since local autonomy was restarted, still there are many skepticism on local autonomy in Korea. Recently, the fiscal crisis of the municipalities has been one of important issues. Some local governments have managed their budget without considering their tax income and other financial resources. In fact, most of basic local governments or municipalities belonging to broader cities have secured only part (60～80%) of their yearly budget. The discussions of a countermeasure to deal with fiscal crisis in order to secure fiscal soundness have been revived, especially along with situations where local government tax income have been decreased since IMF. Since 2005, Central government has been adopted several financial measure to secure and maintain budget balances of local government but there are rare cases that particular local government almost meet the bankrupt situation because of their financial mistake. Therefore, it is needed for examine the possibility of implanting a municipality bankruptcy system for the purpose of restoring their fiscal soundness through court system or being intervened by central government. Local autonomy has been one of important Constitutional issues and social issues, consequently attempts of introducing municipality bankruptcy system is hotly debated as institutional devices to secure the local government’s fiscal soundness. It is not true that any fiscal emergency plan could be unlawful because of Constitutional principle of local autonomy. There have to be careful approach and consider Consitutional principles related local government and democracy. Therefore, when local government financial emergency plan is institutionalized, it should observe the legal limits from the constitutional guarantee of local autonomy, stability and continuity of administrative services, ensuring the residents’s right to know, formal legislative action, maintaining regional equity, maintaining equity between the generations, maintaining the integrity of municipal legislation, enhancing local governments’s accountability and finally introducing of local finance reforms. For introduction of municipality bankruptcy system should be premised the guarantee of fiscal self-responsibility of local government, because local autonomy and self-responsibility are substantially interrelated. This article deals with the possibility of implanting Emergent Financial Management Programs of Central Government from a standpoint of the constitutional guarantee of local autonomy and explores the issues that are derived by legal framework and promulgating on the detailed system design before Emergent Financial Management Programs of Central Government is introduced.