A small Istrian municipality publishes a plain-language budget guide for citizens
Hook
A small Istrian municipality publishes a budget guide an ordinary resident can read. It is boring, and exactly what good local government looks like.
Claim
Good local practice is often boring: publish the budget so a resident can read it.
Story
Marko Ravnić has led Ližnjan-Lisignano since 2016. Local reporting says the municipality published a citizen guide to the budget, “Proračun u malom”, and passed a 2024 budget of 9,911,246.03 euros, 13.64 percent higher than the previous year. His early budgets leaned on EU projects. A State Audit Office report from October 2024 is addressed to him and checks follow-up of earlier recommendations.
Sources
- IDS: Ravnić - the budget is oriented to development projects
- Ližnjan budget proposal 2023 and projections (PDF)
- State Audit Office, Ližnjan (PDF)
Check before posting
- Read the findings of the October 2024 State Audit Office report before praising anything about performance. They were not retrieved.
- The IDS archive is a party outlet and the municipality’s PDFs are self-published.
- Check the guide is still published and covers the current budget.
Counterargument
A readable guide does not show that the money is well spent.
Post angles
Facebook (Croatian)
- Općina Ližnjan objavljuje “Proračun u malom”, vodič kroz proračun za građane. Ne treba vam fakultet da shvatite kamo ide novac vaše općine. Nije naš klijent, samo primjer dobre prakse.
- Koja općina kod vas ima nešto slično?
LinkedIn (English)
- A small Istrian municipality publishes a plain-language guide to its budget. Not a customer of ours, and I would praise the practice regardless.
- Transparency a resident can read in ten minutes is a different product from a PDF dump.