Many cases of councilors in Kaohsiung, and other counties and cities, being investigated, prosecuted or sentenced for alleged fraudulent receipt of assistant fees have been reported. These councilors are from different parties and regions, showing that the problem is structural in nature.
First, there is no substantive review mechanism for the payment of subsidies to councilors to enable them to employ assistants. The system has councilors initially submitting a list of assistants, including how much they are to be paid together with their account number, after which the payment is to be remitted directly to the assistants’ accounts.
In practice, the councils do not review information such as assistant rosters and the amounts to be paid, making it a loophole for fraudulent subsidy gain by means of a false roster.
Second, the regulations on employing assistants are inflexible. The Regulations on Allowances for Elected Representatives and Subsidies for Village Heads and Wardens (地方民意代表費用支給及村里長事務補助費補助條例) expressly stipulates the maximum number of publicly funded assistants employed by municipal and county councilors, and the maximum amount of monthly subsidy expenses.
However, as the services provided by the councilors become increasingly diversified, a phenomenon that is not reflected in the law and regulations, the only solution to cover the extra costs is to provide inflated figures to allow more flexibility. The lack of this flexibility only encourages its misuse.
These problems can be tackled in the following ways:
The first is public disclosure of the roster of congressional assistants. As the late US justice Louis Brandeis said: “Sunlight is one of the best disinfectants.”
Therefore, the rosters of councilor assistants need to be made available online, making the public aware of the number of the assistants a councilor employs. The list should be modified accordingly should there be any changes. Through a more transparent and open mechanism, citizen oversight can help supervise the distribution of assistant subsidies.
Second, a review system should be established. Having employed the assistants, the Department of Civil Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees local self-governance, should work with local councils to review the reimbursement of the assistant subsidy to check for discrepancies and prevent misappropriation of public funds for private purposes.
Third, the law should be amended to make the system for hiring assistants more flexible. As the employment relationship between councilors and assistants is a private contract between two parties, there should be flexibility — for example, no upper limit on the number of assistants — so that employing more assistants would be legal.
Additionally, a Supreme Court judgement (case Taishentzu 1241 of 2018) clearly states the principle of flexible and diversified usage of the budget as long as it does not exceed its limits, saying that if an assistant subsidy is not appropriated for personal use, but used to pay the salaries of assistants exceeding the upper limit of the number of public assistants, it does not constitute corruption.
The Ministry of the Interior’s draft amendment of Article 6 of the regulations is also in line with this principle. Therefore, the Legislative Yuan should quickly introduce the legislation to avoid harm caused by rigid laws.
The problem of fraud in councilor assistant subsidies is multidimensional. Only by removing the systemic flaws can malpractice be avoided.
Wang Yu-pei is an ethics official.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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