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EDITORIAL: New
municipality could mean chaos
The news that Taoyuan county and city will be merged and upgraded to a special
municipality is a cause for celebration as well as concern. It is a positive
development because it will mean that urban development will speed up; it is a
concern because given current fiscal problems, it is not clear where the extra
funds for the upgrade will come from.
Taiwan, despite its size, has six main metropolises with a combined population
of almost 16 million, 70 percent of the overall population. The remaining 30
percent are spread out over 16 counties covering 70 percent of Taiwan. Is this
high level of urban concentration reasonable? With most resources and most of
the population concentrated in six cities, the difference between urban and
rural areas is likely to increase.
There are 47 top-level administrative divisions in Japan. Tokyo, a metropolitan
district, and Kyoto and Osaka, urban prefectures, only make up 20 percent of the
total population. In South Korea, there are eight provinces, one special city
and six metropolitan cities, but these six cities only make up 46 percent of
South Korea’s total population. Taiwan has six special municipalities and three
of those, Taipei, New Taipei City (新北市) and the future Greater Taoyuan, are
connected into one contiguous area. This situation must be quite unique in the
world and is evidence of the severe imbalance of the nation’s administrative
divisions.
The quest for an administrative upgrade among Taiwan’s local governments can be
explained in two words: Money and power.
Special municipalities receive more from the Tax Redistribution Fund than
counties and cities, and they are also allowed higher debt levels. Increasing
the number of special municipalities will diminish the portion of the fund that
goes to the 16 counties and cities, placing the special municipalities into an
“A” team and the rest into a “B” team. The A team will get all the beef and the
B team will be left with the bare bones, leaving them with a strong sense of
deprivation, leading to political polarization.
Upgrading to a special municipality brings a budget increase and a larger
bureaucracy with greatly increased salaries. However, as the central
government’s budget remains unchanged, the additional expenditure will impact
the already troubled fiscal situation.
Special municipalities compete with each other and with the counties and cities
for funds. As the government enjoys less public support than the special
municipality governments, the Cabinet will find it difficult to reject requests
from local politicians ahead of elections.
The addition of a sixth special municipality is a foreseeable disaster. There
are several issues that should have been addressed when there were only two
special municipalities — Taipei and Kaohsiung — such as fiscal policy,
administrative organization, administrative division, personnel issues and urban
planning, and how they would be handled following the creation of new special
municipalities. For political reasons, a wish to avoid problems and an
unwillingness to relinquish control of resources, the government did not deal
with these issues.
The problems that existed when there were only two special municipalities were
compounded by problems created — but not dealt with — after the addition of New
Taipei City, Greater Taichung and Greater Tainan. With the addition of yet
another special municipality, further problems are likely.
The Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures
(財政收支劃分法), the Public Debt Act (公債法) and the Administrative Zoning Act (行政區劃法)
all relate to the creation of special municipalities, but have not been amended
or adapted to deal with more than two municipalities.
Only now has the Cabinet hurriedly sent its amendments to these laws to the
legislature for approval.
This is a matter of grave administrative neglect, and all Taiwanese can do now
is pray that matters do not descend into chaos.
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