Adjara. The meeting of the 2014 calling of the Civil Advisors’ Council members was held on February 28 in the Batumi Civic Engagement Center. Chairs of Public Assemblies of 13 territorial units and representatives of public, business and media organizations have attended the meeting, which aimed to elect the speaker and develop the action plan. The Council members have elected the representative of the Civil Society Institute Natia Apkhazava. At the outset, the 2014 Action Plan will focus on resolving mainly problems that could not be resolved in 2013.

Samegrelo. Meetings were held in several villages of Abasha municipality within the framework of the project "Society participation fo0r democratic self-government”. During the meeting main questions around local self-government were discussed. The population was also introduced to agriculture programmes. Source: Web-page of the organization in social media.

Tbilisi. Debates on "What will the self-government reform bring for the Georgian democracy?” were held on February 26 in the Heinrich Boll Foundation. Prior to that, the Foundation has organized similar debates in the regions. Chairman of the Board of the Center for Local Democracy Network Davit Losaberidze, Executive Director of the Regional Development Center Lizi Sopromadze and the First Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure of Georgia Tengiz Shergelashvili have participated in the meeting. Recording of the debates. Source: the organization’s page in the social network.

Imereti. GYLA’s Kutaisi branch starts a project "Be active and take part in decision-making process”.The aim of the project is the advocacy and resolutionof the problems of Imereti’s population by the inclusion into the project of bureaus of majoritarian deputies, state governors, and local independent units.The project is funded within the framework of the Policy, Advocacy, and Civil Society Development project of East-West Management Institute. Source:the organization's page in the social network

Kakheti. The advocacy campaign, which was aimed to provide information to the Telavi population about how to manage the existing problems around the cleaning service tax, has ended. Within the framework of the campaign bulletins about the cleaning tax, the ways of its collection, and payment, were distributed to the members of the youth club. The above information was provided approximately to 20 000 Telavi residents. Source:the organization's page in the social network

Samegrelo. A partnership memorandum was signed between the "Centre for Civil monitoring and Studies” and the municipalities of Tsalenjikha and Chkhotsku. The aim of the memorandum is to provide support to "Monitoring of the local self-government of the Tsalendghikha and Chkhotskhu municipalities” project, thereby the population will be well informed about the responsibilities and competencies of the local municipalities as well as generally citizens’ rights and responsibility. Source: Web-page of the organization in social network.

Tbilisi. Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy and Transparency International Georgia welcome the readiness of the ruling coalition in terms of raising an election barrier up to  50% for the upcoming municipal elections. For the full text Source:gyla.ge

Samegrelo. The Zugdidi Office of Transparency International – Georgia has organized a discussion over the Self-Government Code in the Civic Engagement Center. The analyst of the organization's Zugdidi Office has informed the audience about key articles of the Code adopted by the Parliament at the third hearing. Employees of the Samegrelo-ZemoSvaneti Regional Administration, Zugdidi Municipality Sakrebulo and Gamgeoba, as well as the CSO and media representatives have participated in the discussion. "Transparency International - Georgia" plans to organize similar discussions in Kutaisi and Batumi as well. Source: the organization's web page in the social network.

Tbilisi. Transparency International - Georgia has released a statement in the social network. "We welcome today's initiative of the Prime Minister concerning the introduction of 50% threshold for electing the city mayors and municipality Gamgebelis. We believe with this regulation the country will have the mayors and Gamgebelis enjoying higher degree of trust and legitimacy. Two considerable issues related to the electoral system still require attention and we hope the authorities will take them into consideration as well," says the statement. For the full text Source: the organization's page in the social network.

Kvemo Kartli. From January 30 to February 7, CSO "Sida" has organized the discussion of development plans of the Bolnisi, Dmanisi, Marneuli and Gardabani Municipalities with the population. The documents of strategic development drafted as part of the project "Local actors unite for economic development and governance in the South Caucasus" were presented to the local interested parties by the members of the group working on the plans. Source: the organization's page in the social network.

Kvemo Kartli. SIQA has organized a meeting on February 7 between the members of the Rustavi school-based civic clubs and the Mayor of the city Davit Jikia. The schoolchildren have informed the city Mayor about a project developed in the youth camp of civil integration, aimed at regulating the traffic on the crossing of the Leonidze and Meskhishvili Streets in Rustavi. As part of the project, road signs will be installed in this section of the road, a "circle" will be organized and the two "zebra" pedestrian crossings will be drawn. Source: the organization's page in the social network.

Tbilisi. The National Association of Local Authorities has released a statement on the current budget crisis in Tbilisi." ... We urge all factions of the Tbilisi Sakrebulo to approve the city’s budget and avoid the threat of direct state governance. By understanding that the capital’s governance system complicates control over the budget spending, we offer Sakrebulo to jointly control the city’s government and numerous CSOs express readiness to join this proposal.It is unconceivable to introduce state governance in the capital by referring to a budgetary crisis, when the new local authorities will be elected in three months and the voters will themselves issue a mandate for expenditure and control of the Tbilisi budget,” says the statement. For the full text Source: npo.ge

Tbilisi. Transparency International Georgia, the Georgian Young Lawyers Association and the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy released a statement. "We believe that the amendments proposed to the Inter-Parliamentary Working Group by the ruling party are not enough to create a fair voting system for the upcoming municipal elections.It is unfortunate that the Ruling Coalition in the Inter-Parliamentary Working Group did not view reform of the electoral system as a priority to ensure fair and equal elections", says the statement. For the full text Source:transparency.ge

Shida Kartli. A meeting was held on January 30 in the Gori Office of the "Georgian Young Lawyers' Association" to discuss amendments made to the draft Self-Government Code. Local CSO and media representatives have attended the meeting.

Imereti. A monthly meeting of CSO representatives was held on January31 in the Kutaisi Branch of the "Georgian Young Lawyers' Association". Key topic of the meeting focused on the positive and negative aspects of the draft Self-Government Code. GYLA's recommendations on this issue have already been submitted to the Parliament.

Batumi. The Citizens' Advisory Council launches a new working year. A deliberative-consultative body of the Sakrebulo, which ensures the transparency of self-government activities and citizen participation in its exercise, consists of 19 members elected for the term of 1 year. 2–2 of these are from non-governmental, business and media organizations, and the remaining 13 from the city's territorial bodies. CSOs and media outlets have elected 4 out of 19 members through a secret ballot. Elected by a majority of votes from the civil sector were Natia Apkhazava (Civil Society Institute, Batumi Branch) and Nino Tavlalashvili (GYLA, Batumi Branch), and from media outlets - Maia Merkviladze and Irma Zoidze. Representatives of business sector and territorial units are yet to be elected. Source: the page of the Citizen's Advisory Council in the social network.

Kakheti. The Telavi Office of GYLA has organized an informative meeting on the local budget, which aimed at enhancing public participation in the self-government activities, informing the residents of Telavi about approved budget priorities, and discussing these priorities.During the meeting the Head of the GYLA'sTelavi Office MarekhMgaloblishvili has informed the attendees about amendments that the local self-government has made to the 2014 budget.Representatives of the Financial Department of local self-government, the Municipality Sakrebulo, as well as CSOs and the initiative groups have attended the meeting.

Tbilisi. Representatives of the Tbilisi City Hall have presented on January 29 the draft Tbilisi budget to the representatives of CSOs and general public. We would like to remind users that the capital's budget is still not approved. Detailed presentation was followed by the discussion. According to the CSO representatives, it would be better to involve broad public not only in the discussions over the draft, but in the process of drawing up the budget itself. In their opinion, it would be better also for the financial document to have a programmatic nature and for the indicators of its fulfillment to provide opportunities for better measurement of results. According to the City Hall representatives, presented budget is of the very programmatic nature, yet, CSO representatives claim in response that Georgia-wide there is still a lot of work for elaborating a programmatic financial document, and they offer to both central and local authorities the resource at the sector's disposal. Much noise has followed the issue of cooperative housing, raised by the citizens attending the event.In the near future the Tbilisi Sakrebulo plans a similar meeting on the Tbilisi budget with the CSO and public representatives. Draft capital's budget – 2014.

Tbilisi. CSOs have released recommendations for the 2014 local self-government elections. The document includes the following issues: simplification of the polling day procedures, optimization of number of the Election Commission members, steps required for better preparation of the election administration, restriction of propaganda on the polling day, funding of political parties, media and elections, gender equality. Recommendations signed by 7 CSOs were sent for examination to the inter-factional group of the Parliament. For the full text Source:eedc.org.ge

Tbilisi. On January 29th, 2014 , "International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy” presented its research -  "Analysis of the Draft Law on Local Self-Governance, International Experience and Recommendations”. The presentation of the research has been followed by the discussion between the representatives of the civil society, political parties and the government regarding the Self-Governance reform and the initiatives to be implemented in the nearest future. The discussion was focused on the increase of the number of the self-governing entities, their composition, as well as the direct election of the executive officials and no-confidence mechanism. Among the topics of the discussion were the financial independency of the self-governing entities, the management of the property, the decrease of staff number, also the regional and community self-governance. The research  Source:isfed.ge

Adjara. The Advisory Council functioning with the Sakrebulo of self-governing city Batumi has met with the Public Council representatives, potential members of the Advisory Council of 2014 calling and the heads of local territorial bodies on January 23 in the Batumi Civic Engagement Center. The meeting aimed to summarize the 2013 activities of this body and design future plans for its development. Staffing of the Citizens' Advisory Council will complete by the end of February.

Tbilisi. CSOs have met with representatives of political parties in the central office of the "International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy" and discussed the amendments to be made to the Election Code for the purposes of the 2014 self-government elections. The "International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy", "Georgian Young Lawyers' Association" and "Transparency International - Georgia" have participated in the meeting. Draft version of the election system developed by the organizations. Source: isfed.ge