In regional areas facing rapidly declining and aging populations, even maintaining basic administrative services can become difficult. It is necessary for the nation to face such a reality and hold a broad discussion on issues including the local government system.
A panel of experts at the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry has compiled its second report on the challenges Japanese society will face in 2040 and measures to deal with them.
In nearly half of all municipalities in the country, the population is expected to decline by more than 30 percent, compared with that of 2015. Due to a falling birthrate, a labor shortage would become serious 20 years from now.
It is reasonable for the report to sound an alarm bell that the city functions which have underpinned people's livelihoods and industries will no longer be sustainable.
The time is ripe for local governments to get rid of the administrative style of competing for state subsidies to promote their economies, and instead to attach importance to maintaining administrative functions needed for local residents.
It is also inevitable to implement measures that would ask local residents to bear burdens, such as merging or closing public schools and discontinuing bus and railway routes. There will be limitations on all the cities, towns and villages providing a "complete set" of administrative services.
On the basis of the two-level system of prefectures and municipalities, the central government has entrusted identical roles and administrative services to every local government. As the demographic structure has changed rapidly, such a local government system that is uniform across the country can no longer be maintained.
More mergers will happen
How should administrative services be continuously provided? Needed is a flexible system in which local governments will be able to make choices at their own discretion, in line with the actual regional situations.
The report emphasizes the need for multiple municipalities to join hands. It assumes utilization of the "core regional urban areas through cooperation" concept, under which neighboring municipalities would coalesce around core cities with a population of more than 200,000 and other cities.
At present, 28 such regional urban areas have been formed, cooperatively handling public facilities and tourism promotion.
The central government aims at clearly regarding such core regional areas as a new type of administrative entity and giving authority and financial resources to them. Concrete legal arrangements will be discussed at the Local Government System Research Council, an advisory panel to the prime minister.
It has also been pointed out that, for instance, while health care administration has been primarily handled by prefectural governments, it would be more efficient for emergency medical services, home-based medical care and the like to be carried out by promoting cooperation within such core regional areas, suited to the actual conditions of local people's lives.
In place of makeshift institutional reforms, the research council must also discuss such issues as cooperation with private companies and the nurturing of human resources from a variety of angles, by eliminating bureaucratic sectionalism among government ministries and agencies.
Amid the severe environments surrounding small municipalities, the number whose population would be less than 500 in 2040 is estimated to total as many as 28. It is inevitable for them to consider merging with other municipalities.
The government had promoted, over more than 10 years, the so-called Heisei-era megamergers of municipalities, and even afterwards has been supporting mergers made on the municipalities' own initiatives. The current special law aimed at promoting municipal mergers expires at the end of March 2020. Ways to address the issue for the years following the expiration also should be discussed.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, July 5, 2018)
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