Financial problems of municipalities in Turkey: A field survey in the municipalities in the Aegean Municipalities' Union

As importance of municipal administration increases along with urbanization and more sophisticated social life, problems growing out of internal and external factors also augment. Usage of resources has the highest priority among these problems. These problems, called fiscal issues but emanating from a complicated network of interactions, have many causes.Distribution and amount of resources from central administration to local governments and municipalities in particular is the most controversial reason of fiscal issues. It is not easy to determine how much the amount of share distribution application should be or how to compose the best proper criteria. However distribution from the center in large-scales engenders the greatest handicap against autonomy of local governments. As distributed shares grow, dependency of the local to the center increases and also it becomes a natural process that the central government, which transfers considerable fiscal resources, increasingly demands to place the local government under tutelage. Heightening the resources to solve the fiscal issue grows the problem of autonomy and tutelage.Municipalities have alternative sources of income that is different than those of transfers from the center. These are local taxes and other activity revenues of alternative activities. Fiscal resources derived from the local?s own activities must be preferably increased by providing from more special revenues to strengthen autonomy and fiscal situation of municipalities in direct proportion. In handling this matter, it is necessary that some tax items be left to municipalities from center and the center recognize both these tax items and implementation autonomy of municipalities regarding the alternative initiatives.Some important portion of fiscal issues of the municipalities emerges in the form of usage of resources. Efficiency and productivity in the usage of resources are as important as finding new resources or improving existing resources. Increasing the amount of money cannot solve the fiscal problems without avoiding from inefficiency, prodigality and fixing structural issues. The greatest fiscal problem of municipalities are determined to be based on efficiency and productivity. To solve the fiscal problems, structural issues contradictory to institutionality of municipalities should be arranged, whose roots can be traced back to legislation, planning, fiscal administration, budget and debt administration, personnel policy and political bias.