Press Release, 1.02.2019

Lev Shlosberg

Lev Shlosberg, MP from the Yabloko faction in the Pskov Regional Assembly and head of the Yabloko branch in the Pskov region, devoted his speech before the 28th session of the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies to the liquidation of the district newspapers of the Pskov region and attempts to stop this process.

In late November – early December 2018, administrations of the municipal districts of the Pskov region received “road maps” for the liquidation of municipal unitary enterprises – publishers of district newspapers. It is planned to create one organisation (instead of municipal enterprises) ensuring publication of all district newspapers in the region.

At the beginning of his speech, Lev Shlosberg noted that all district newspapers should literally cease to exist in their present form in the Pskov region in the close perspective; whereas most of these papers had just celebrated their 100^th anniversary.

The deputy believes that any innovations maybe divided into two parts: “either someone creates something new, multiplying the achievements of the predecessors, or someone destroys what has been existing”.

Shlosberg pointed out that this is exactly what is happening now with district newspapers: heads of districts are ordered to liquidate municipal unitary enterprises publishing the newspapers, regardless of their financial condition, cut some of the employees, and transfer the remaining people along with the rights to publish a paper to a certain organisation which is yet obscure.

Shlosberg recalled that in December 2018 he sent an appeal to the regional public prosecutor’s office, and also handed a copy of this letter personally to Governor Mikhail Vedernikov.

Shlosberg noted that local self-governments act in their own right: “Establishing a print media to publish municipal legal acts, discuss drafts of municipal legal acts on issues of local importance, and inform residents of a municipal area about about the socio-economic and cultural development of the municipal district,  development of its public infrastructure and other official information is the legal and inalienable authority to local self-governments: it can not be taken away”.

Shlosberg also stressed that concentrating all the local papers in one hands meant not only singing more praises to the Governor, but also those who had proposed it aimed at getting all the aid for these purposes from the regional budget, but this represented a violation of the law.

Shlosberg said that the regional public prosecutor’s office had just informed him that his arguments were fully substantiated and “in order to prevent violations of the law, the Governor of the Pskov region was informed of this.”