지방자치단체의 자치사무에 대한감사의 한계

Abstract

Inspection conducted against the local autonomous body includes a variety of kinds such as parliamentary inspection and investigation into state affairs, inspection of the Board of Audit and Inspection, inspection of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, inspection of other central government agencies, administrative audit and inspection by high-level or competent local autonomous body council, inspection by the head of higher-level local autonomous body, self-inspection by the law enforcement agency of the competent local autonomous entity, audit under the Citizen’s Request for Audit, etc. Such audit systems against local autonomous body have to be carried out within the range in such a manner of not defaming the nature of local autonomy that is ensured systematically by the Constitution. Especially for the audit systems against local autonomous body conducted within the category of national supervision, the systems and customs of inspection at the period when local autonomous system was not implemented still continue without remarkable modification. They are against legal principles that form intrinsic attributes of local autonomous system such as principle of self-responsibility, principle of universality, principle of supplement, etc. This phenomenon results from the reality that perspectives of local decentralization have not taken root in the nation and officialdom yet. Therefore the current audit system against local autonomous body requires reform in compliance with the nature of local autonomy. Especially for autonomous administrative affairs of local autonomous body, the exercise of audit right in terms of national supervision must be restricted to only the judgment of legitimacy so that the competent local autonomous body may take its responsibility on its own. Under this circumstance, in the case of the Request on whether the joint audit implemented against the claimant, Seoul Metropolitan Government, on its autonomous administrative affairs from Sep.14 through 29, 2006 by the Minister of Public Administration and Security, etc. infringed the rights of local autonomy, the Constitutional Court made decision dated of May 28, 2009 accepting the petition reasoning that the said audit violated the rights of local autonomy of the claimant granted under the Constitution and the Law of Local Autonomy, failing to meet the requirement for startup of audit under the relevant regulations such as the Law of Local Autonomy, etc. The decision of the Constitution Court is of significant meaning with regard to the rights of local autonomy. Taking this opportunity, we need to review again overall basic laws that regulate the audit against local autonomous body such as the Board of Audit and Inspection Act, Administrative Auditing Regulation, etc. under the classification of accounting audit and duty investigation, and of autonomous affairs and assigned affairs, etc. It is needed to make systematic improvements so that the audit of autonomous administrative affairs should be restricted to the judgment of legitimacy only. In addition, in more detail, the range of the assigned affairs should be drastically reduced and converted into autonomous affairs so that genuine local autonomy can be embodied, which could be intrinsic solution for the development of local autonomy. Ultimately, it is desirable that the audit system against local autonomous body should be in the direction of reinforcing the auditing function of local council as far as autonomous affairs concerned, while the auditing function in terms of national supervision as far as the assigned affairs concerned should be reduced where minimum auditing function as necessary can be performed in an efficient manner. In addition, the efforts for systemizing overall auditing system such as prohibition of duplicate audit, omitting of audit, hierarchy of audit, representation of audit, etc. should be made so that the duplicate functioning of entire auditing system against local autonomous body may not cause excessive burden over the administrative affairs of local autonomous body.