Public reporting and access to budget documents for citizens is a pre-condition for improving the transparency of local government and accountability of public finances. However, in Montenegro these issues, especially at the local level, are not given enough attention. The discussion on good governance at the local level is mainly based on the need to rationalize public spending and optimize the number of employees, while public finance transparency is often ignored in the formal requests addressed to municipalities. Therefore, in this report, the Alternative Institute focuses on the fundamental issues of local government transparency by assessing the fulfillment of minimum standards in publishing basic budget documents.

The report contains a detailed overview of the research results by municipalities, while in a separate section is also given an overview of citizens’ participation in public discussions on local budgets for 2018.

At the end of the report, the Alternative Institute also recommends possible ways of improving existing practices and municipal websites.

The published report can be downloaded here.