Lee Jae-myung: "There Will Be No Sharing of Budgetary Authority with the Provincial Council"

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Lee Jae-myung, Governor of Gyeonggi Province, clearly expressed his opposition to sharing budget formulation authority with the Provincial Council.

At a New Year's press briefing held on the 6th at the Gyeonggi Governor's official residence in Paldal-gu, Suwon, Governor Lee stated, "In the past (during former Governor Nam Kyung-pil's administration), the Provincial Council had some budget formulation authority due to a coalition government," but he straightforwardly opposed this by saying, "However, this is not acceptable."

He emphasized, "The Provincial Council has representatives and leadership, and there are channels to propose policies, so if they convey their opinions to the executive branch through these routes, they will be sufficiently reflected," adding, "However, it is not acceptable for the Council to arbitrarily increase the budget during the review process."

Governor Lee also mentioned, "(Since my inauguration, there have been) conflicts with the Provincial Council over this issue," citing a representative case where the executive branch allocated a budget of 500,000 won for postpartum care, but the Council increased it to 800,000 won during the review process. Governor Lee vetoed the budget execution at that time to refuse approval.

He further stated, "In principle, it is not acceptable for the Council to increase the budget for new items," and added, "It is not right to divide budget formulation authority between the province and the Provincial Council. Because of this, we even underwent an audit by the Board of Audit and Inspection."

In conclusion, he said, "It took time to resolve these issues, but things are normalizing," and added, "While the Council's authority to cut the budget is inherent and unavoidable, I hope that absurd situations such as creating new budget items or increasing budgets will not occur in the future."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.