Many municipal employees are also candidates in local elections
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The disproportionately large number of municipal employees who also serve as elected members of Finland’s local councils is likely to remain largely unchanged after next month’s municipal elections.
For instance, in the northern city of Kemi, 40 city employees are running in the elections for the City Council - nearly a third of all candidates.
In the outgoing Kemi City Council a record 40% of the elected members are also municipal employees.
According to one expert, Aimo Ryynänen, Professor of Municipal Law at the University of Tampere, the situation is problematic.
"If a decision-maker is a person who has the interests of his or her own organisation to protect, he or she might not have a completely open mind toward all options."
Of all present members of municipal and city councils around Finland, 15% have jobs with the local authority itself.
About a quarter of the council members of both the Green League and the Social Democratic Party are employed by the municipality.
Marianne Pekola-Sjöblom, a researcher at the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, found out in her study that the number of municipal employees on local councils and municipal boards correlates partly with the number of employees that a local authority has.
Pekola-Sjöblom says that voters may not necessarily make conscious decisions to choose municipal employees when they pick a candidate. For instance, many will vote for a teacher without realising that the candidate’s employer is the local council that he or she works for.
In Sodankylä in the far north of Finland, local council member Elsi Pokela (Centre), who works as a municipal social worker, has been elected to the Sodankylä Local Council twice with a large haul of votes, and now serves as the council’s chairwoman.
She feels that municipal workers are good decision-makers because they are familiar with the way the local authority is run.
Pokela says that she has disqualified herself from decisions on issues directly related to her own work.
The law on eligibility of municipal employees for municipal office was changed in 1995. At that time holders of top municipal positions were barred from running in local elections.
Professor Ryynänen feels that this restriction goes far enough. Kari Prättälä of the legal department of the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities agrees with him.
Nevertheless, both experts hope that parties and municipal employees would give closer consideration to whether or not they should run in local elections.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 21.9.2004 - TODAY |
 Many municipal employees are also candidates in local elections |
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