The municipality of Bitola has raised the number of sectors from six to ten, and the number of departments from 19 to 27. The local administration calls this dispersing power and aligning with new legislation. The opposition calls it hiring party cadres, and recalls an old joke - "the deputy's deputy, the director's deputy director".

The decision on the organisation, remit and working methods of the municipal administration was passed by the council majority led by VMRO-DPMNE, on a proposal from mayor Toni Konjanovski. It ends a system in place since 2015.

The maths is what carries the argument. Ten sectors and 27 departments mean the municipality must appoint at least 37 managers. Councillor Mile Trajkovski of the civic initiative "Poinaku" calculates that the current structure had around 20 managerial positions, and the new one pushes that to 38. The opposition claims this will burden the administration with more than 200,000 euros a year.

"Is there really a genuine need for a new administration this large, or are we once again watching party and political rewards handed to the obedient?", Trajkovski asked.

The answer from the other side

Council president Bojan Bojkoski explained that the municipal administration has 143 employees and is the smallest relative to population. He added that under two new laws - on administrative officials and on public sector employees - the reorganisation must be completed by 1 January 2027 at the latest.

"All we are doing is dispersing. The functions held by some sector and department heads are now shared with other employees so power is not concentrated in one person," Bojkoski said.

The argument is not stupid. The municipality points out that bulky sectors mean powers piling up on one person, a load that is hard to carry out well. Still, with 143 employees and 38 managerial posts, almost every fourth employee in Bitola municipality will be somebody's manager.

What is good in the decision

Not everything here deserves criticism. The new structure creates a dedicated IT department for digitalisation and promises electronic services and a digitalised Geographic Information System, letting residents obtain documents and inspect urban plans from a computer. If that actually works, the trudge between counters in Bitola will genuinely shrink.

Another item is the problem. The decision states explicitly that the Internal Audit Sector answers "directly and solely to the mayor". An auditor who answers only to the man whose administration he audits is an auditor with limited courage. If he finds an irregularity involving an associate of the city's top official, the report goes to - the city's top official.

The human resources department, meanwhile, gets the task of running "mobility" procedures for employees. In the law that means rapid staff reorganisation. In the Macedonian public sector the same term has for years served as a way to take on officials from other institutions and bypass regular public job adverts.

The decision has been voted through, but it cannot take effect without approval from the Ministry of Public Administration. Until then the open question stands: is Bitola getting a faster municipality, or just a more expensive one.