Urban districts occupy a special place in the system of municipalities due to their potential and
role in the implementation of governmental economic policy. Possessing the most developed infrastructure,
facilities and a good financial basis, large and medium-sized cities accumulate the major part of budget
revenues. However, the predominant part of their revenues that amounts, according to various estimates,
to 70–85% [1, 6, 15] goes to superior budgets. As a consequence of the reforms of intergovernmental fiscal
relations and local government that were held in 2000–2009, cities were left without stable, legislated fiscal
revenue sources that were sufficient to fulfill their obligations to the population. Currently, city government
can fully dispose of single tax on imputed income, individual property tax and land tax. Significant
imbalances in the distribution of budget revenues make cities dependent on the financial assistance of
higher levels of public authority and lead to an accumulation of problems. The Federal Treasury data on
the execution of urban districts budgets show the stagnation of own revenues in 2011–2014. According
to the calculations made by ISEDT RAS, in 2014, the availability of own budget revenues per capita was
below the average value in 60% of the capital cities of Russia’s constituent entities (regardless of Moscow
and Saint Petersburg). This affected even major centers like Voronezh, Volgograd, Ufa, Chelyabinsk and
Omsk. In the Vologda Oblast, the fiscal capacity of residents in urban districts that include the cities of
Vologda and Cherepovets was 17% below the national average due to the reduction in the amount of receipts
of own budget sources since 2012. In the conditions of acute shortage of financial resources to meet the
growing obligations to support citizens, local authorities are forced to make borrowings; this fact limits the
possibility of conducting a responsible fiscal policy and implementation of strategic investment projects.
The paper presents the results of the analysis of execution of the budgets of the Vologda Oblast municipal
districts. The main objective of the analysis was to identify the factors that reduce the self-sufficiency of urban districts in relation to intergovernmental fiscal policy at the regional level. The main conclusion
of the research consists in the fact that the actual state of city budgets reflects the lack of economic ties
between budgetary security of cities and the efficiency of their economies
Keywords
urban district, intergovernmental fiscal relations, urban districts budgets, own revenues of the budget, efficiency of intergovernmental fiscal policy