Municipalities of Finland

The municipalities (kunta in Finnish, kommun in Swedish) represent the local level of administration in Finland and act as the fundamental administrative units of the country. Municipalities have the right to levy a flat percentual tax, which is between 16 and 20 percent, which makes up two thirds of the total tax burden. Municipalities control many community services, such as schools, health care and the water supply, and local streets. They do not maintain highways, set laws or keep police forces, which tasks are the responsibility of the central government. A municipality is governed by an elected council (kunnanvaltuusto, kommunfullmäktige), which is legally autonomous and answers only to the voters. The size of the council is proportional to the population, the extremes being 9 in Sottunga and 85 in Helsinki. Municipal managers (kaupunginjohtaja, stadsdirektör for cities, kunnanjohtaja, kommunsdirektör for other municipalities) are civil servants named by the council. There are no mayors in the English sense in Finland, although the city manager of Helsinki is called ylipormestari "Lord Mayor" for historical reasons. The government has recently made a law proposal that would allow municipal councils to elect mayors.

As of 2005, there are 432 municipalities in Finland. Of these 114 are cities, 44 are bilingual and 3 are unilingually Finland-Swedish, and 16 are in the autonomous province of Åland. In population, the median is 4723 (Taipalsaari), the extremes being 132 (Sottunga) and 559716 (Helsinki). Although there are exceptions, the line between a city and a small town or rural municipality can be drawn at Hamina with 21720 inhabitants. In the population ranking, above Hamina there are only cities (and their surrounding areas). The areas of the municipalities vary, as the population is the primary criterion for forming a municipality. The largest are found in Lapland, of which the largest is Inari at 17321 km² (130 km square). The smallest municipalities are very small towns. Kaskinen is an independent town with the area of only 10 km² (3 km square). Kauniainen, which was originally a corporation in Espoo, is only 6 km² (2,5 km square).

Municipalities were originally parishes. The old word for a municipality is pitäjä, 'keeper', because when the system was instituted, one municipality kept one minister. Furthermore, there was a system of tax areas, which was not necessarily convergent. Furthermore, cities were chartered separately. Until 1977 municipalities were divided into cities (kaupunki, stad), market towns (kauppala, köping) and rural municipalities (maalaiskunta, landskommun). The market towns were abolished and renamed as cities. The rest of the municipalities were classified as 'other municipalities'. From 1995 onwards only 'municipality' is recognized by law and any municipality is allowed to call itself a city if it so wishes.

There is currently a heated political debate in Finland about reforming the municipality system. Essentially, a large number of small municipalities is seen as detrimental to the provision of public services, and there have been suggestions of state-imposed mergers. A committee led by Minister for Regional and Municipal Affairs Hannes Manninen has suggested creating a two-tier system of municipalities with different powers, while the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (Kuntaliitto) favours a system where municipalities would be units of at least 20,000-30,000 inhabitants, cf. the current median at 4,700. The motion has been inspired by a similar reform in Denmark (see Municipalities of Denmark).

Municipalities by regions

See also

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Municipalities by regions

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