Most likely, the delay in raising deputies' salaries was connected with calculating the entire volume of sharply increased expenses for ensuring the activities of parliamentarians, and most importantly — estimating whether the state budget could withstand such a burden. Judging by the fact that deputies' salaries were raised, it was decided that it could. DT's attempts to find out the origin of those considerable additional funds needed to carry out Operation "Deputy Prosperity" were not very successful. In the Verkhovna Rada apparatus, our question was answered rather evasively: "Preparing the ground for raising deputies' salaries, the government specifically accumulated funds for such needs." One could rest easy on this, if not for a nagging doubt: shouldn't payments from the state treasury be made in strict accordance with the budget approved by the Verkhovna Rada or the amendments to the budget law adopted by it? In the VR regulations committee, we were told that amendments providing for increased expenses for the needs of the deputy corps were supposedly introduced. But they could not specify when and in what amounts. We had to compare the figures ourselves in the original version of the state budget law adopted in December of last year and in its current version.

The law on the state budget of Ukraine for 2005 provides for several expenditure items related to the functioning of the Verkhovna Rada. Among them are the organization of official receptions of the parliament, visits of Ukrainian deputies abroad, organizational (including information-analytical and material-technical) support of the legislative body, and some others. The largest expenditure in this series, over 455 million hryvnias, falls on the maintenance of the VR apparatus. Second place is occupied by the conduct of legislative activity. A little more than 280 million hryvnias is allocated for this. Of these, 93.5 million hryvnias appear under the heading "remuneration of labor." It is precisely these, judging by everything, that constitute the fund from which funds for monthly deputy provision are drawn. Thus, the sums laid down in the budget for the maintenance of our dear legislators and the measures related to their work have practically not changed. The only figure subjected to significant adjustment concerns the coverage of VR activities on television and radio. From 12 million 700 thousand, it was reduced to almost seven million hryvnias. But the sum designated for remuneration of labor within the framework of legislative activity has not changed by a single kopiyka.

However, an increase in funds for deputies' salaries, even one approved by parliament in the form of amendments to the budget law, simply could not have happened. If only because the same budget law prohibits increasing expenditures related to the functioning of state authorities at the expense of reducing expenditures on other state needs. And besides, it was precisely from parliamentary money that compensation payments were made to deputies "for creating proper housing conditions." A separate line for this good cause is not provided for by the state budget. And therefore, the housing money is accounted for either in the same item "Conduct of legislative activity of the VR" or in the expenses for "servicing the activities of the VR," the volume of which, according to the budget, is almost 56.5 million hryvnias. However, even this, at first glance considerable, sum is hardly commensurate with the expenses the state incurred to resolve the housing issue of people's representatives. True, apartments and money for improving the housing conditions of legislators were issued throughout all the years of activity of this convocation of the VR. And therefore this year's budget is involved in the total amount of payments only partially. But in the list of recipients of monetary compensation there are also many people's representatives who received their mandate only this year, after the mass transition of deputies from legislative to executive power. And together with the mandate — all the privileges due to them according to the law.

The times have passed when people's representatives who came to the capital from other cities and villages lived in hotels for years. And the matter is not only the parliamentarians' victorious urge for domestic comfort. According to the first deputy head of the regulations committee Serhiy Sas, in 1996, a deputy's stay in a hotel for two years cost the state budget as much as a two-room apartment (at prices from 10 years ago, of course). Now, four years of a parliamentarian's hotel life can result in a sum of 250 thousand hryvnias. Buying a decent apartment at market prices with this money is, of course, difficult. But our parliament, as it turned out, has its own house-building combine that constructs housing at a cost of 2,950 hryvnias per square meter. For a quarter of a million hryvnias, at such rates, one can quite easily acquire an 80-square-meter apartment. 86 people's representatives did not deny themselves such pleasure. However, no — one of them, as indicated in the list of legislators provided with apartments, did refuse to receive housing. Former general director of the Mariupol Illich Metallurgical Combine Volodymyr Boyko did not wish to settle in a building located not in the center of Kyiv. But his colleagues from parliament who are "unpretentious in everyday life," such as Serhiy Bychkov, Ernest Galiyev, Anatoliy Gershfeld, Valentyn Dzon, Oleh Karatumanov, Oleksandr Leshchynsky, Ihor Plokhoy, Ravil Safiullin, Heorhiy Skudar, Viktor Tymoshenko, Anatoliy Franchuk, Oleh Tsariov, Petro Yushchenko and some others, received — some one-, some two-, some three-, and some even four-room apartments in new buildings on Tychyny and Sribnokilska streets.

The list of parliamentarians who decided to convert their due square meters into national currency consists of 138 people, and it also contains many surnames associated with banks, factories, steamships and other attributes of a good life. Among them are Vasyl Salyhin and Serhiy Ratushniak, Hennadiy Astrov-Shumilov and Petro Dyminsky, Mykhailo Dobkin and Serhiy Kasyanov, Viktor Topolov and Mykola Zlochevsky, Enver Tskitishvili and the Yaroslavsky brothers. No one questions the legality of these (as well as all other) deputies receiving compensation sums. Their amount ranges from 91 to 400 thousand hryvnias. And the decision on allocation, according to the leadership of the regulations committee, was made collegially and only after the submission of all certificates and documents testifying to the uncheerful state of the applicant's housing conditions. Not everyone was lucky enough to pass the committee filter: 35 applicants for an apartment and subsidy were refused. And ten people's representatives had to prove in court that they were in family relations with persons presented as members of their families. After all, every person who shares housing with a deputy is an additional 20 meters or their monetary equivalent. In a word, to receive apartments and compensations, certain efforts had to be made. No one forcibly handed them out as a supplement to the deputy mandate. Therefore, talk that in some cases housing or compensation was pushed through by deputy assistants counting on them, whose bosses would not have bothered for such trifles, does not entirely correspond to reality.

Everything is legal. Although it should be acknowledged: some of those who received deputy housing may indeed use it, say, for hanging all the ties they own in it. And there are also among them those whose financial situation would not be affected by buying an entire deputy high-rise building. And the compensation sums indicated next to the surnames of some legislators are fully commensurate with the sums for pocket expenses that they take with them on a week's vacation. It should also be noted that many people from the housing lists came to the Verkhovna Rada for deputy immunity, and here they are even paid extra.

During the preparation of this material, we repeatedly heard that on the scale of the country, the volume of funds needed to pay the increased monthly deputy maintenance and other benefits designated for legislators is not such big money. However, besides the all-Ukrainian scale, there are other scales as well. The scale of a single kindergarten where, due to lack of funds, children cannot be fed meat. The scale of the staff of a Lviv city hospital whose doctors are forced to declare a hunger strike demanding an increase in their beggarly salaries. The scale of hearing-impaired people who, again due to a lack of money in the budget, are being deprived of the opportunity to watch television news with sign language interpretation. The scale of a boarding school for children with severe pathologies in Novohrad-Volynskyi in the Zhytomyr region, where nannies are forced to wash three tons of laundry by hand since there is nowhere to get 150 thousand hryvnias to buy a washing machine. One could go on listing endlessly. But not a single case has been recorded of a deputy refusing to receive an increased salary or transferring the monetary compensation due to him to the account of, say, a boarding school for disabled children or a nursing home. However, what are we talking about, if practically all significant fortunes in this country have been amassed, to put it mildly, through illegal borrowings from the state budget? Taking from it what is already due to him by law seems to be simply the sacred duty of any Ukrainian capitalist.

But what is noteworthy is that even parliamentarians who traditionally act in the role of defenders of the oppressed and downtrodden see no injustice in the twentyfold difference between the salary of a qualified doctor and that of a legislator. According to some data, the Communist Party faction discussed the issue of a sharp increase in deputies' well-being. It was not possible to confirm this information, but some assure that communist deputies decided to transfer a third of their salary ...to the party treasury.

Probably those who claim that cheap government costs society too dearly are right. And the increase in deputies' salaries can be viewed as a means of combating corruption, illegal lobbying and other negative phenomena connected with parliamentarians using their status, rights and opportunities for mercenary purposes. Parliamentary old-timers say that the first truly big money was brought into the Rada by Pavlo Lazarenko, and the first to put lobbying on a professional basis was Serhiy Tyhypko, as has been written about repeatedly. However, as often happens, the followers surpassed the pioneers of introducing market relations into the country's legislative body. History knows cases when two million dollars were offered for one vote. And for a positive vote of one small but very proud faction — contracts for the supply of gas from a well belonging to one of the representatives of this faction to large Donetsk enterprises. According to the calculations of connoisseurs of deputy souls, only 7-8 percent of people's representatives live exclusively on funds received from the parliamentary treasury. Others act in strict accordance with the rule: one must live the four-year term of their deputy powers in such a way that later it is not unbearably painful for the aimlessly lived years. Fortunately, the demand for legislators' services is steady. The stimulation of parliamentarians' transition from one faction or group to another has become a byword. According to very widespread rumors, representatives of some deputy associations, in addition to their official deputy salary, receive substantial monthly assistance from sponsors of the group or faction. Often, according to some data, people's representatives receive rewards for lobbying services of an individual or group nature.

In this respect, the Ukrainian parliament is not unique. Temptation and people who cannot resist it exist in legislative bodies in other countries as well. But the arsenal of means of combating such phenomena there is far from limited to high deputies' salaries. This can be learned from Yuriy Yakymenko's material "Civil Service According to the Rules...," published on the fifth page of this issue of DT. To it one can only add that in Ukraine attempts were made to bring lobbyists out of the shadows by limiting lobbying to a strict, legally regulated framework. Back in 1999, people's deputy Ihor Sharov developed and submitted to parliament a draft law on lobbying in Ukraine. According to him, in his work he relied on the American model of regulating this process and the experience of other developed countries. "The role of objects of lobbying was to be legislatively fixed to the Verkhovna Rada as a whole and to each people's deputy separately, the president, the Cabinet of Ministers, the National Bank, local state authorities and their officials," Mr. Sharov told DT. "But, most importantly, lobbying in it was recognized as a type of professional activity, and disciplinary, civil, administrative and criminal liability of lobbying associations and unions for unlawful actions was also provided for." The sanctimonious attitude to the issue prevented Ukrainian parliamentarians from adopting the law. And here we still have, as in that well-known anecdote: the body part exists, but the word does not.

Returning to the level of remuneration of legislators, I would like to note: from well-known examples, the salary of a parliamentarian is equated to a minister's pay perhaps only in Russia. In Slovakia, for example, a government member receives about 2,400 in dollar equivalent, while a deputy's salary is about 1,500 US dollars. In the Czech Republic, a ministerial salary equals approximately 3,600 dollars, and a deputy's — about 2,000 popular conventional units. At the same time, the average salary in this country is eight hundred dollars. In Italy, as reliable sources confirm, ministers receive approximately 20% more than a parliamentarian. And, by and large, this is fair. After all, the volume of work and degree of responsibility of even the most efficient legislator, let's be frank, are hardly comparable to ministerial ones. Take at least the formal indicators of people's representatives' work effectiveness: the number of drafted bills and deputy inquiries, attendance at sessions, the number of speeches at them. It seems it would be interesting for the voter and taxpayer to learn, by looking at the website deputat.org.ua, where such information is provided for each of the deputies, that among them there are many "front-runners of legislative work" who throughout the entire term of their powers have not submitted a single bill, have never spoken from the tribune, or have limited themselves to one or two "I yield the floor to so-and-so."

However, a comparison of deputies' salaries in different countries with the living standards of their voters looks more eloquent. In Great Britain, for example, the annual income of a member of parliament is about 45 thousand pounds sterling. Do not try to compare this figure with the salary of our people's representative. Compare it better with the annual remuneration of the director of an English primary school, which equals 31 thousand pounds, or a doctor who receives over 46 thousand pounds. The wise English probably believe that cheap medicine or education costs society as dearly as cheap government.

Olha DMYTRYCHEVA