environ2

Small municipalities hold forum against merger

Resisting the government plan to accelerate mergers of more than 3,000 municipalities to about 1,000, representatives of small local governments held a national forum from April 24-25 in Hara Village in Nagano prefecture. About 520 municipal officials, including 31 town and village mayors from 125 local governments took part in the forum.

Despite the carrot-and-stick government measures taken so far, it is reported that almost 2,000 local governments will remain next March.

Ikegami Hiromichi, non-governmental Municipality Institute's senior researcher, spoke on the current situation. He pointed out that now that the government is cutting subsidies to major cities, many local governments are aware that mergers will not ease their financial hardships. They began expressing their antipathy to forced mergers, he stressed. Tanaka Yasuo, Nagano prefectural governor, made a speech.

Mayor Kobayashi Mikio of Niigata Prefecture's Tsunan Town reported that his town's working team has reviewed more than 1,000 town undertakings. The team met more than 200 times in order to cut non-essential expenditures and maintain essential services for the residents, he said.

The forum adopted an appeal stressing the urgent need to help local governments survive despite their heavy financial hardships. It criticized the government for threatening to cut subsidies to municipalities unless they accept merger. (end)