The rule, exactly. Before an election each citizen chooses: to vote — or to take a payment and not vote in that election. The payment is a percentage of the median income, set by referendum; there is no fixed sum. One ballot is one vote, with no multiplier in the count; the vote is amplified only in that each ballot's share grows as others step out. The budget pays under law; a candidate never pays. Only a referendum of all citizens — simple majority, no quorum — introduces, changes or repeals the rule.
The protocol has been introduced nowhere and no pilot has been run: shares, turnout and outcome figures in the chapters are estimates, and the protocol promises nobody an election victory. If a chapter says otherwise, Exact Answers and the Charter are correct. For a candidate: ten questions and ten steps. For a citizen, a mayor, a finance officer, a donor, a journalist, a scholar, a lawyer: answers by role. Everything in force in one file: llms-full.txt.
Moldova in Figures: Levies, Mayoralties and the Price of an Office¶
Chapter: 09 — Other Countries (paired with §53) File: 09_053b · v1 · 19 September 2026 Source: the architect's and the assistant's check of the general theses of 019c (reform by subtraction) and 013e (the laws of economics in politics) against Moldova's open data: the government's guide to voluntary amalgamation of mayoralties (2026), the IDIS "Viitorul" budget-transparency portal (finance ministry data, 2019), the censuses of 2004 and 2024. By the "international first" rule the general logic stays in 019c, and the country material is set out here.
1. Everything has been counted, nothing has been done¶
The architect proposed a check: "if you think that budgets and efficiency are being counted in villages today, try to find an open report or budget and find something like our discussion in real Moldova, with figures." The check gave a result the assistant did not expect: the figures exist, and they coincide almost word for word with the discussion in 013e.5. The assistant's statement "nobody works out this sum" is wrong. It has been worked out — for more than ten years. It is not acted upon.
2. Mayoralties¶
Data from the official government "Citizen's Guide to Voluntary Amalgamation" (State Chancellery, 2026) and the studies behind it:
| Indicator | Value |
|---|---|
| Mayoralties in the country | 892 |
| Of them with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants | 87 % |
| Share of a small mayoralty's budget going on salaries and administration | about 30 %; in mayoralties of up to 1,500 inhabitants from 10 to 31 %, in some up to 86 % |
| Share of own taxes and fees in the revenue of mayoralties of up to 1,000 inhabitants | about 20 %: the rest is transfers from the centre |
| Share of houses without water that lie in small mayoralties | 80 % |
| What amalgamation gives | Administrative spending falls from 30 to about 11 % of the budget |
Reports on the options for territorial reform were published in 2015 (with UNDP support) and in 2018; the reform concept in 2026. Eleven years of studies with the same conclusion.
The architect read two rows of the table together: "so a mayoralty collects taxes and gets money almost for its own salaries; very funny." The conclusion is even milder than the figures allow. In the smallest mayoralties own taxes and fees give about 20 % of revenue, while about 30 % of the budget goes on salaries and administration: the office costs one and a half times what it collects. Everything it has collected from the village it spends on itself, and it takes another third on top out of transfers; everything else that reaches residents — the kindergarten, the road, the lighting — comes from the centre, and the mayoralty serves as a pass-through window for that money. By the pizzeria test (018.40–41) this is an enterprise whose management costs exceed its takings: in a market it would close within the first year, whereas here it exists for decades, because a transfer replaces takings and the customer cannot leave. (A caveat to the arithmetic: 20 % is the share for mayoralties of up to a thousand inhabitants, 30 % is the average for small mayoralties; the groups are close but not identical.)
3. One real budget¶
The architect softened the conclusion: "well, perhaps not repeal, but digitise it nationwide and understand: how do the residents live if they cannot feed a mayor? It is somehow strange." It has already been digitised: the budget-transparency portal has a profile for every mayoralty. Here is the smallest in the country by population — the mayoralty of Salcia, Taraclia district, budget execution for 2019 (the last year on the portal; finance ministry data).
| Indicator | Lei | Per inhabitant |
|---|---|---|
| Inhabitants | 293 | — |
| Total revenue | 1,023,895 | 3,495 |
| of which taxes | 207,872 (20.3 %) | 709 |
| of which transfers from the centre | 747,200 (73 %) | 2,550 |
| Total expenditure | 967,216 | 3,301 |
| of which "general public services", that is, the mayoralty itself | 651,499 (67.4 %) | 2,224 |
| of which culture, sport, recreation | 216,677 (22.4 %) | 740 |
| of which housing and communal services | 38,232 | 130 |
| of which education | 20,208 | 69 |
| of which social protection | 5,000 | 17 |
| Compensation of employees (economic classification) | 716,898 (74.1 %) | 2,447 |
| Investment in fixed assets | 10,000 (1 %) | 34 |
It can be read like this. Two thirds of the budget is the upkeep of the office itself; three quarters is salaries; on everything that will remain in the village after this year — a road, a pipe, a roof — ten thousand lei was spent, 34 lei per inhabitant. The taxes collected cover a third of the cost of the mayoralty. And the most graphic point: the mayoralty costs each inhabitant 2,224 lei a year — almost exactly the sum D (033c.9c). The village already pays one D a year for every inhabitant today — only not to the inhabitant but to keep up the window through which the rest is handed to him.
This is an extreme case, not the average: in an average small mayoralty about 30 % goes on administration. But there are dozens of such extremes, and the portal shows every one.
4. So how do the residents live¶
The answer is not that they cannot feed a mayor but what a mayoralty is allowed to feed on at all. The main taxes — VAT, excises, most of income tax — go to the centre; what stays local is a property tax on outdated valuations and petty fees. And such a village lives on what local tax does not touch at all: remittances from abroad, pensions, the vegetable plot. The village has an economy; the mayoralty has no tax base. Meanwhile the office's staff is nearly constant — a mayor, a secretary, an accountant, a land surveyor — regardless of whether the village has 300 people or 3,000; so below roughly fifteen hundred inhabitants the cost per head soars, and it is not for nothing that the law names that threshold as the minimum.
5. A signature worth more than the salary¶
The architect remarked: "and the mayor is the one who converts land for building, isn't he? And there is no money for his salary." In substance this is true: the planning certificate and the building permit are issued by the mayor, and the local council takes part in changing the designation of land. The result is an office with no money for its own upkeep and a signature that turns a plot under maize into a building plot at a price difference of tens of times (019c.6c). This is not an accusation against anyone but a description of incentives: a poor office with an expensive signature is a textbook construction, and the surprising thing is not that it sometimes fires but that it is kept. The subtraction here is twofold: remove the conversion of designation for a house on one's own land (019c.6c) — and the signature ceases to be worth anything; amalgamate mayoralties — and the one that remains can afford a specialist on a proper salary.
6. How far it is to the next mayoralty¶
The architect asked exactly this: "and how far is the drive to the next mayoralty if this one is removed?" From the coordinates of the settlements (straight-line distances; by road roughly one and a half times more):
| Neighbouring mayoralty | Straight line |
|---|---|
| Budăi | 4.3 km |
| Carbalia (in the neighbouring autonomy; itself one of the smallest in the country — 374 inhabitants) | 5.3 km |
| Musaitu | 6.1 km |
| Aluatu | 6.4 km |
| Vinogradovca | 7.4 km |
| Novosiolovca | 7.4 km |
| Albota de Jos | 7.8 km |
| Balabanu | 8.4 km |
| Taraclia, the district centre | about 12 km |
Within a radius of eight and a half kilometres of a mayoralty of 293 inhabitants there are eight more mayoralties, each with its own mayor, secretary and accountant. The nearest is six or seven kilometres by road, ten minutes by car, half an hour by bicycle; the district centre is about twenty minutes away. And the village goes on emptying: the 2004 census counted 382 people in the village of Salcia itself, the 2024 census 166. The office has stayed the same.
7. Is this x10? A count from real budgets¶
The architect: "so if all these within a 10 km radius are merged, that will be exactly the x10 efficiency." A check against the same portal's data for 2019 — eight mayoralties of Taraclia district within that radius (Carbalia, which belongs to the neighbouring autonomy, is not included).
| Mayoralty | Inhabitants | Expenditure, lei |
|---|---|---|
| Salcia | 293 | 967,216 |
| Aluatu | 704 | 1,140,057 |
| Budăi | 834 | 2,225,765 |
| Musaitu | 838 | 1,485,846 |
| Balabanu | 864 | 2,610,149 |
| Novosiolovca | 1,384 | 3,352,021 |
| Albota de Jos | 1,425 | 3,480,406 |
| Vinogradovca | 1,548 | 4,321,985 |
| Total | 7,890 | 19,583,445 — 2,482 lei per inhabitant |
Eight offices for 7,890 people — fewer than live in a single city block. Taking the government's figures for them (about 30 % of the budget on administration now and about 11 % after amalgamation) gives: administration costs 5.9 million lei, after amalgamation 2.2 million; a saving of about 3.7 million lei a year, that is, 19 % of all spending, or roughly 470 lei per inhabitant. This agrees with the studies' estimate of 14–25 %.
So it does not give x10, and one must not say so. There are three exact multiples. For a resident of Salcia the cost of the office falls from 2,224 to roughly 270 lei — eightfold. Across all eight mayoralties administrative spending falls threefold. And the budget as a whole gains a fifth. A manifold effect exists only where the base is lowest — exactly as stated in 015b.6b; on average across the cluster it is not an order of magnitude but a fifth. Yet even a fifth here is 3.7 million lei every year for eight villages that spend tens of thousands on everything that lasts beyond the year: in Salcia, ten thousand lei. Investment in what will remain to the villages grows not by 19 % but manifold. (A caveat: the administration share for the other seven mayoralties is taken as the average, not from their profiles; the exact count can be made from the same open data in an evening.)
8. The maid in the best room of the castle¶
The architect: "I suspect that the mayor of Salcia gets the highest salary, that half his costs are borne by the state, and that he, a servant of the people, lives better than the people. It is as if the maid and the cook slept well in the largest room at the centre of the castle, while the count lived in the shed." This can be checked only indirectly: the assistant did not look up the salaries of particular people and should not. But the budget says enough. Compensation of employees in 2019 came to 717 thousand lei; with a staff of six to eight, that is on average 7.5–10 thousand lei a month per person including contributions — roughly the national average wage that year (about 7.4 thousand lei) and several times the average pension (about 1.9 thousand; both figures from the assistant's memory). In a village of 293 inhabitants, most of them pensioners, these are almost certainly the highest and the only stable earnings. A correction to the architect's words: the state bears not half but almost three quarters of the costs — transfers make up 73 % of revenue.
In absolute terms this is not wealth — 400–500 euros a month — and the reproach is not addressed to people who most likely work honestly for little money. It is addressed to the construction, and that explains resistance to reform better than "a greedy mayor": in an emptying village the mayoralty is the main employer. Six to eight salaries are six to eight families for whom the office is the village economy; together with relatives they are a noticeable part of the electorate, and amalgamation for them means not "optimisation" but the loss of the only job. The transfer from the centre works as a hidden unemployment benefit paid in the form of posts — the most expensive form possible, because every salary comes with an office, heating and powers. The consistent answer is the same as in 013e.5: if the state wants to support these families, it is cheaper and more honest to pay them directly than to keep, for that purpose, an office that spends 1 % of its budget on what will remain to the village.
9. What a mayor does and why there is one in every village¶
The architect: "and what matters does a mayor actually decide, apart from an office and a salary? Everyone has a car now, and a matter can be settled remotely by phone or by driving to the centre. Why does every village need a mayor if a hospital is supposedly not needed?" The reproach of inconsistency is fair: the argument "a service need not be in every village", which the assistant applied to the school and the doctor, applies to the office first of all. The functions of a first-level mayoralty fall into three groups with different fates.
| Group | What it is | Is presence in the village needed |
|---|---|---|
| Paper | Certificates of family composition and household, the household register, registration of births and deaths, simple notarial acts, collection of local taxes, military registration | No. The government itself, in its amalgamation guide, promises "more than 600 services" online and through a service centre; most certificates are needed only because another agency demands them — subtraction in its pure form (019c.5) |
| Competence | Procurement, projects for external funding, planning certificates and permits, water and sewage, roads | No, on the contrary: this should be done where there is enough money for a specialist. An office of four people with a budget of a million lei can neither run a tender nor manage a project — the same guide says so outright |
| Presence | The kindergarten, snow clearing, street lighting, the cemetery, the social worker, action in a flood or fire | Yes, but this is work for one or two people on the spot, not for a mayor with a staff |
So an office in every village is needed less than a school or a paramedic: the first two groups of functions gain nothing from closeness to the resident, and the second loses from it. A correction to the words "everyone has a car": about half of households have one (019c.6g), and precisely those who need certificates most often have none; so the argument rests not on the car but on the telephone and on the certificate not being required at all.
How others do it (from the assistant's memory, unchecked). Lithuania has 60 municipalities for 2.8 million inhabitants; Latvia cut them from 119 to 43 in 2021; Georgia abolished the village tier in 2006 and kept about seventy municipalities; Denmark went from 271 to 98 in 2007. Moldova has 892 mayoralties for 2.4 million inhabitants — on average fewer than three thousand people per office. The opposite example is France with tens of thousands of tiny communes; but there a small commune is sustained by a rich tax base, and the technical functions were long ago handed to associations of communes.
10. What the reform itself looks like¶
And this is the best illustration of this section one could find. Amalgamation has been made voluntary. To get mayoralties to agree, the government pays: an incentive package for 2026–2030 of 6.49 billion lei, including 3,000 lei for every inhabitant of an amalgamating mayoralty. That is about 2,700 lei per inhabitant of the country — a sum on the order of one D (033c.9c): the state pays for consent to the reform about as much as the protocol pays for forgoing a vote. And the citizens' guide opens with a list of guarantees: "the village remains a village", "the kindergarten and school are not closed", "the mayor and councillors stay in office until the 2027 elections", in every village a service centre opens in place of the mayoralty and a "mayor's representative" appears. That is, each closed office is replaced by a new office with a new official — exactly the line of thought for which the architect reproached the assistant in 013e.5: the flow is preserved, the channel changes.
11. Schools¶
Here more has been done, and that too is telling. Funding by the formula "money follows the pupil" has been in force since 2013. A school of 50 pupils receives about 44.5 thousand lei per pupil, a school of 900 about 27 thousand: a small school costs 50–65 % more per pupil. The ministry is creating a network of model schools, one per district, with school buses; to attract children from small schools, families are given free transport and a monthly allowance for two years — that is, money to the family, as in 013e.5. And the same political wall: school optimisation is criticised as "the destruction of rural communities", and small schools go on existing.
12. What the check showed¶
First: the assistant was wrong to claim that nobody counts; this should have been checked before it was written. Second, and more important: knowledge is not the bottleneck (019c.2) — this is now not an argument but a document. The state knows the figures, publishes them, agrees with the conclusion — and can carry out the reform only voluntarily, only with the guarantee "nothing will close" and only by paying several billion. The reason is named between the lines of the same guide: the reform has to be sold to a voter who does not care what a mayoralty costs but does care whether the signboard stays. The protocol changes precisely that voter.
13. Honest caveats¶
Voluntary amalgamation with compensation is not stupidity but a reasonable way to carry out a reform within the system in force; the reproach is addressed not to its authors but to the conditions they work in. The outcome of the reform is unknown: the deadlines run to the 2027 elections. And the guide's figures are aggregates; the calculation in 013e.5 remains a rough estimate rather than a reconciliation with a real budget sheet. 🟡
14. Transparency without demand¶
The first version of this caveat said the assistant "did not find in open form" the budget of an individual village, and the architect asked: "and is it normal that a village's budget is not openly posted on the internet?" A check showed that the assistant had framed the matter wrongly: the budgets are posted. Decisions of local councils, budgets included, have been published since 2018 in the State Register of Local Acts; the finance ministry runs a budget-execution portal; and the IDIS "Viitorul" institute with a Slovak partner maintains a budget-transparency portal — more than 1.3 million data points for over 930 localities since 2012, with a profile for every village, comparison of villages with one another and with the district average, and even a section "If I were mayor". The assistant failed to find it not because it is hidden but because he searched superficially — the second such error in this section (the first was building permits, 019c.6c).
The finding matters more than the correction. The portal was built on grants from foreign foundations, not at voters' demand; there are no data on how many people use it, but judging by eleven years without reform it has not affected decisions about mayoralties. This is an exact confirmation of the thesis of 018.40.2: demand creates supply, and supply without demand creates nothing. Transparency in Moldova has been supplied — by donors, the ministry, the register — but whoever decides elections has no reason to look into it. For twenty years reformers assumed that people lacked information; it turned out that what was lacking was a reader. The protocol adds nothing to the openness of data — it creates the one who needs them: a voter who has paid for his vote, and a candidate who profits from showing him a figure.
15. Other Moldovan examples in the general sections¶
Country material left in the general sections as illustration alongside other countries: compulsory driving schools and cash registers (015b.6c, 019c.1), the price and construction cost of housing, building permits and land conversion (019c.6c), the excise on importing a car and the share of VAT in the budget (019c.6e), the forecast of the share of car owners among those who stay (019c.6g), the 2024 vote-buying scheme and pensions (019d.2–4b), the calculations "a bus or a house" and "the village or flats" (013e.5).
Related: 053 (Moldova: the opportunities) · 019c (reform by subtraction) · 013e (the laws of economics in politics) · 019d (the market price of a vote) · 018.40–41 (the pizzeria test) · 015b.6b–6c (the low base)