▲ Gyeonggi Province and the Gyeonggi Provincial Assembly
A tug-of-war continues between Gyeonggi Province and the Gyeonggi Provincial Assembly over this year's second supplementary budget bill, which the province formulated by drastically cutting budgets due to fiscal difficulties.
While this does not immediately cause major disruptions to public livelihood projects, prolonged delays in processing the supplementary budget bill raise concerns about potential damage to local residents.
According to Gyeonggi Province and other sources on October 7, the supplementary budget bill, which was originally scheduled to be reviewed and resolved during the 393rd extraordinary session of the provincial assembly held from September 1 to 18, has yet to be processed as of today.
The core issues are the restoration of cut public livelihood project budgets and measures to secure funds for them.
The provincial government has maintained its stance that restoring livelihood project budgets is difficult, as it formulated the supplementary budget bill reflecting 546.5 billion won in expenditure restructuring due to difficult fiscal conditions.
However, facing public backlash and after repeated negotiations with the provincial assembly, it agreed to revive some livelihood projects.
These projects include postpartum care expense support, supplies of health fruits for children, mobility support for the transportation vulnerable, and improving working conditions for corporate taxi workers.
In addition to these, the provincial assembly insists on the need to restore several other livelihood projects, such as improving working conditions for daycare center workers, while the province expresses reluctance, leaving negotiations at an impasse.
Furthermore, the province and the provincial assembly hold completely different positions on how to raise the funds for restoring livelihood projects, making it difficult to find a breakthrough for resolving the conflict.
The province maintains that it has no additional capacity to secure financial resources under the current financial crisis.
It is known that Gyeonggi Province issued local government bonds five times during the 8th popular election term and repeatedly borrowed from the Integrated Fiscal Stabilization Fund, leaving a deposit balance of only around 60 billion won.
Gyeonggi Governor Kim Dong-yeon said in August regarding backlash over delaying personnel appointments for the second half of the year, "Until the budget readjustment process is completed, no one can move to another position leaving their current duties." He added, "We inherited the Gyeonggi provincial household ledger, and we are left with almost no lump-sum funds (funds) with clearly designated uses, having drawn almost all of them out and issued bonds, leaving only debts piling up with monthly interest."
On the other hand, the provincial assembly suggests the additional utilization of the Integrated Fiscal Stabilization Fund as an alternative.
Ahn Gwang-ryul, floor leader of the Democratic Party of Korea at the provincial assembly, recently stated, "When assessing the scale of available funds such as the Integrated Fiscal Stabilization Fund currently held by the province, there is sufficient capacity to accommodate the livelihood project restoration budget requested by the assembly."
Amid a failure to narrow the gap between the province and the provincial assembly, the assembly presented a new amended proposal to the province yesterday, adjusting the requested scale for livelihood project budget increases, and demanded a final response by October 8.
Previously, the provincial assembly demanded an increase in the scale of tens of billions of won—specifically in the 80 billion won range—to restore cut livelihood budgets during the early stages of negotiations.
Since then, it has presented amended proposals while adjusting the requested scale and target projects to the 50 billion won, 320 billion won, and 400 billion won ranges.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
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