Print

Mail

wiki links

Legislators should help Taichung County

Last Wednesday, the Cabinet passed the draft administrative division act and a draft amendment to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) and submitted these drafts to the legislature for review. If passed by the legislature, these laws would help reform land division and would substantially increase local financial resources.

In addition, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and others have suggested an amendment to Article 4 of the Local Government Systems Act (地方制度法) that would lower the requirement for obtaining special municipality status from 1.25 million to 1 million residents to help Taichung obtain such status and promote development.

Although the central and local governments and the opposition parties have reached a consensus on the promotion of Taichung to special municipality status, there are a few fundamental differences. Only promoting Taichung City will be unfair to the rest of Taichung County and could lead to friction between the city and the county. Including the city and not the county would have a negative impact on the development of the greater Taichung area.

Led by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the government has already announced plans to elevate both the city and county. Although the Cabinet has long-term designs for reforming the administration of national land, regional redivision will be a waste of time since it is impossible to know when the legislature will allow the draft law to be placed on the legislative agenda. My suggestion is therefore that Article 7 of the Local Government Systems Act be amended first to initiate the upgrading of Taichung county and city.

This law currently stipulates that merging and upgrading counties and cities to special municipality level does not involve division of or adjustments to the administrative districts of other special municipalities. Such mergers and upgrades can be carried out by the concerned county and city governments by submitting a request to the local government council. After the request is approved, the government can submit a written request to the Ministry of the Interior, which will refer the request to the Cabinet for approval.

This means that such policy decisions are basically made through a bottom-up process. I suggest amending Article 7 of the law so that when the merger of counties and cities into special municipalities does not involve changes to administrative divisions, the ministry can ask for the opinions of the concerned governments and then report to the Cabinet. After approving it, the Cabinet would submit the suggestion to the legislature for its approval before implementing the decision.

This means that the government maintains the initiative when it comes to land planning and can initiate the upgrading of counties and cities to meet national and local development needs. It is therefore only necessary at this time to amend a single article in the Local Government Systems Act, so that the merger and upgrade of Taichung city and county can be started without involving the administrative division act.

Taichung is the central hub of Taiwan, with transportation services such as Taichung International Airport, the Taichung Free Trade Port Zone, the north-south coastal and mountain railway lines, the north-south Sun Yat-sen and Formosa freeways and the high speed railway.

The entire Taichung area has excellent development potential. It could become the engine driving development in central Taiwan.

Lin Chia-lung is the secretary-general of the Democratic Progressive Party.

Translated by Perry Svensson
This story has been viewed 1203 times.