The administrative-territorial and economic transformation of the municipal formations[Административно-Территориальная И Экономическая Трансформация Муниципальных Образований]

One of the obvious trends in the development of local self-government is the change in its territorial foundations due to the ongoing trends of increasing urbanization and depopulation of rural areas of the regions, the lack of financial resources of municipalities to address local issues, and the large-scale delegation of authorities in rural settlements to a higher level. This is due to the administrativeterritorial transformation or transformation of municipalities (association, division, change of status). The article proposes an algorithm for transforming municipalities, which, in addition to the legally established procedures, includes a set of preliminary work to assess the feasibility of transformation according to the selected criteria of economic, financial and social consequences of the transformation, carried out by a project group with relevant competencies. At the same time, administrative forms of transformation of municipalities are not the only way to solve the problems of ensuring their financial viability and autonomy. The article also discusses the types of economic transformation in which the territorial foundations of local self-government do not change, but new or changing current economic superstructures over municipalities appear or intermunicipal relations are formed. The inclusion of a municipality in a program sub-region, agglomeration, territorial development zone, territories of advanced socio-economic development, as well as the development of territorial public self-government and the organization of inter-municipal cooperation allow consolidating the efforts of municipalities and attracting additional resources to address issues of local importance in conditions of limited financial resources and a high degree of subsidization of municipalities.