Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 18th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Working Group on Local Government Author(s) Ioana Acsinia National School of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest Romania Title Does the crisis exist? A case study on the city of Targoviste File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract At the end of the year 2008 it was declared that Romania officially entered a period of economical crisis and all sectors should pay special attention to their activity. The GDP of the country decreased in the last semesters and the numbers were showing a period of economical dropdown. But still, there were many people that weren’t feeling any change in their activity. Was there really a crisis or it was just a first wave of panic that made people be more careful with their way of life? It is undoubtedly true that some sectors did feel a drop, but did the public sector suffer? And how has it dealt with the problem if so? To find out the answer for this question I have studied the activity of the city hall from a medium seized city in Romania, Targoviste. Targoviste was until the XVIth century the capital of Romania and it still holds the title of capital for one of the districts in the country, Dambovita. With a rich history as a centre for important rulers of the country the city counts approximately 100.000 inhabitants. Considered medium sized and holding the 28th place in population size (from a total of 103 municipalities) in Romania, according to the 2002 census, it is one of the biggest cities in this category, with a structure and an budget representative for this level of development. Being positioned very close to the capital city it also receives a considerable amount of influence in its growth from Bucharest. For a broad analysis on the activity of the mayor’s office in the months of crisis I chose to study the budget for the last years, how it evolved, and not only. This reflects in the activities the office develops and sustains (e.g. the quality of the public services provided, from the investments in infrastructure to the transportation system) to the situation of the civil servants inside the system. The paper maps the depth of change and modifications in the institution’s activity and structure in the period corresponding to the crisis in comparison with previous years, providing an overview of the impact of the crisis in terms of budget evolution, reductions in public expenditure and dynamic of the local income over the last years, delivery of local services, structure of the institution, as well as the level of interest given to the training of the civil servants. Based on the results of these analyses the paper concludes that the situation in the public institution studied in relation to the period of economical crisis is not as severe as it might have been expected, the numbers still showing an upward trend on the evolution of the local administration of the city studied.
