Summary of civic monitoring: the activity of local governments and mayors in 15 cities

Monitoring of activities of local authorities and mayors regarding openness and transparency of local policy and implementation of election commitments.

This report highlights the summarized results of civic monitoring of local councilors and mayors’ activities regarding openness and transparency of local governance and fulfillment of campaign commitments, which was carried out by OPORA activists in 15 regions of Ukraine. The monitoring also included two expert opinion polls. The research began with the start of the local election campaign, and it finished with the evaluation of seven-months’ work of the newly-elected authorities.

The goal of the survey research was to determine the level of effectiveness of mayors in shaping and implementing local policies, and to identify priorities for community development and problem solving socio-economic and humanitarian development, and to assess the mayor’s activities within the first 100 days in office. The surveys were conducted from October 1 to 8, 2010 and from February 17 to March 3, 2011. The expert surveys were conducted among representatives of nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, research institutes, city entrepreneurs and media. The selection[1] of 480 experts to be involved in the research was conducted using the "snowball" method. OPORA’s observers also monitored the openness and accountability of newly-elected city councils, and analyzed the composition of councils and deputies’ approach towards addressing the local communities’ problems that were identified by the expert opinion poll. Through civic monitoring, OPORA activists attended sessions of city councils, monitored city councils’ offical websites and press services, and analyzed councils’ decisions.

The analysis of concrete actions to implement electoral promises showed drastically different and controversial trends among local councilors across 15 regions of Ukraine and among the city mayors’ activities in implementing electoral commitments, authority-community communication and connections with voters. Despite regional distinctions and regional political culture and structural traditions, it is possible to outline certain similarities that characterize the overall progress of the political process, and the forms of communication between deputies and voters that are inherent and common to all the regions. Among them:

• In the majority of cities, there are problems with engaging the community in decision-making, and the community has almost no influence on the relevant processes, and does not have the possibility to participate in drafting of official decisions (Donetsk, Kherson, Rivne, Cherkasy, Kremenchuk, Luhansk, Odesa, and some community development issues in Chernivtsi, Lutsk, Ternopil, Sumy, Ivano-Frankivsk);
• Lack of effective opportunities for full and systematic community oversight of local authorities’ activities, in some cases lack of information about the content of decisions adopted by city councils, the process of overseeing the implementation of policy in the region is too complicated, poor reporting on the activities of local governments and budgetary processes (Donetsk, Kherson, Rivne, Cherkasy, Kremenchuk, Luhansk, Odesa, and some issues of community development in Chernivtsi, Lutsk, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk);
• The lack of systematic communication between elected council deputies and voters, the same trends are observed in some cities among mayors;
• In many cases (80%), the actual content of local deputies’ political activities is inconsistent with community expectations in the socio-economic sphere (education, small business development, leisure activities for children and youth). Most likely we can speak about their intentions to form and implement policy in the areas of community development highlighted by the experts as priority issues;
• Most deputies in local councils, sometimes up to 70%, represent business and are heads of state, private, or municipal enterprises. This potentially creates opportunities for lobbying individual business interests at the regional level, which lays the foundation for increasing the level of corruption among the deputies;
• Lack of transparency in the work of local councils, including lack of access for citizens to draft decisions submitted to the City Council session before and during the course of the session itself, including individual cases concerning land issues;
• There is a a general trend of strengthening the Party of Regions’ (PoR) influence after Ukraine’s 2010 local elections, including attempts to form a majority in local councils, some trends of disproportionate distribution of positions in the Standing Commissions of local authorities, and ignoring the opinion of the opposition in this process[2];
• Weakness of the opposition in many regions, and lack of regional alternative visions proposed by the opposition to reform local policies;
• The weakness of the opposition in the regions, lack of reasonable alternatives on their part in terms of local policy formation;
• Increased politicizing of humanities policies among local authorities’ activities that are beyond the powers of local authorities (such as the reaction to high-profile decisions of central government, including the removal from Stepan Bandera of the title of Hero of Ukraine, language issues, using copies of the Victory Flag, the use of Soviet symbols, etc.)

RECOMMENDATIONS

To local government prepared on the basis of monitoring city councils and mayors’ activities:

• Ensure the proportionally-representative distribution of senior positions on permanent city council commissions, and introduce relevant norms in local government regulations.
• Promote a full-fledged pluralistic political environment in local governments, which will improve the quality of adopted decisions on the development and implementation of local policies to involve the community, target audiences, and experts into the process of designing and carrying out local policies in economic, social and humanitarian areas.
• Increase local government transparency by requiring the publication of draft decisions prepared by local governments in the areas of social policy (social and economic issues, budget issues and land issues). 
• Develop a process of public information dissemination, implement the Law of Ukraine “On access to public information”, and ensure the publication of decisions adopted at council sessions on official local government websites. 
• More actively use democratic mechanisms in policy making processes (for example, public hearings), and take the results this work into consideration during decisionmaking processes to develop and implement local policies.
• More actively and regularly conduct consultations between representatives of local governments, communities and groups targeted by local social and economic policy.
• Facilitate more effective work among local government advisory bodies, systematically include relevant organizations into the process of developing, implementing and revising policies.
• Ensure that information about the results of policy implementation is provided to communities, target groups and experts. This information should be provided by publicizing statistical reports of local governments, figures on funding local initiatives and initiatives, analyzing the consequences of certain policies’ impact on community development, and solving social, economic, cultural and educational problems of cities. 
• Develop electronic information resources of local governments.
• Ensure comprehensive annual reporting and informing local governments about whether city councils are members of associations of local governance, and publicizing information about the results of their activities in relevant institutions.

Openness of local government and political communication with community

The openness and cooperation of local councils, mayors and the community, as demonstrated by the conclusions of the monitoring results in 15 regions of Ukraine, have distinct regional differences, which are partly a continuation of established political traditions rooted in certain segments of society and government, both on the part of government and on the part of the community.

The Ukrainian history is that there are unclear procedures of openness and transparency among local authorities and mayors are also traditional for the Ukrainian reality, and a lack of government openness to interaction with community and civic groups. Relevant findings are demonstrated by expert interviews conducted by OPORA activists.

In particular, in most regions there are problems with involving the community into decision-drafting and decision-making, as the studies conducted by OPORA experts indicate that there is a traditional trend for Ukrainian authorities to simulate community participation to legitimize certain decisions of city councils, even though these decisions often do not have the support of the community. Under these conditions there is an imitation of the use of participatory democracy forms.

According to these observations compiled during the course of civic monitoring, just as existing problems in systematic feedback between elected council members and voters is becoming more important, the same trends in some cities are seen among mayors. Expert survey data mostly shows that, in terms of reporting and communicating with the community, mayors use the mechanisms of press conferences and briefings. In some city councils the regulations provide that once in six months each deputy has to inform voters about his\her work. However, the forms and possibilities for such informing are not defined.

Forms of participatory democracy: dialogue among local authorities and communities

Civic monitoring has shown that local authorities, mayors and civil society organizations not not always effectively use the available forms of participatory democracy - in particular, the possibility of civic councils, public hearings - as elements of communication and public dialogue.

This situation partly continues past traditions of government-community communication. An expert survey conducted in 15 regions by OPORA observers before local elections[3] revealed a number of common trends in the development of partnerships between communities, NGOs and government. In particular, experts in virtually all the regions outlined common problems:

• Lack of mechanisms for communities to influence government officials who fail to exercise their responsibilities;
• Lack of desire among authorities to listen to appeals from the citizens, and lack of citizens’ knowledge about their constitutional rights. Authorities (especially at the regional level) do not always respond to petitions;
• Sometimes unprofessional CSOs and their failure to be equal partners in solving local problems;
• Lack of communication between voters and deputies;
• Top-to-bottom local initiatives - if something happens somewhere, it comes not from the bottom but from top, initiated by a political or business group
• Almost all the regions mentioned corruption as an issue: pro-government bribery system, "pocket" funds, and shares in business.
• Inefficiency of legally-identified possibilities for community influence on the government.

Today, civic monitoring has shown that, while shaping local policies in different areas, local authorities do not always take into account public opinion, provide public education or advice on making high-profile decisions in the social sphere that are related to activities of the entire city and the whole community. Practice shows that very often, even after public hearings, recommendations elaborated at such events are not implemented in local policymaking. These events mostly do not contribute to finding public consensus or social compromise on the formation of social development priorities, but are organized to automatically legitimize the decisions of local authorities or mayors.

• For example, OPORA observers in Rivne state that one of the shortcomings of the Rivne City Council is that local authorities do not engage the local community in discussing draft decisions and does not allow them to submit their proposals on the agenda. Thus, in Rivne there is no mechanism for public participation to shape local politics. Observers state that holding public hearings is not a widespread practice.
• Experts point out that in Krivyi Rig the city council holds public hearings while preparing the draft regulations. The number of hearings corresponds to the number of prepared drafts. However, experts note hearings are conducted at a formal level, they are announced on time, and on the website there is all the information on regulatory policy: planning regulations, discussions and monitoring of them, public hearings and so on.
• In Kherson, according to civic monitoring, observers note that, for example, when forming the agenda of the city council session, the opinion of NGOs is not considered, and virtually no public discussion on any issues takes place. In the city, public hearings are conducted periodically by the City Council, but their recommendations are almost never taken into account when making decisions, so the character of these community developments are only formal in nature. Usually, documents are not provided to the public.
• Experts in Donetsk note that in the City Council there is no public debate on draft decisions of the Donetsk city council, which negatively affects the awareness of deputies, the public and local media about their content and possible consequences. This situation applies not only to current issues of city life, but also to high-profile events for the whole community. For example, there was almost no discussion of the issues concerning the elimination of schools.[4]  In the City Council these decisions were taken quickly and without much discussion among deputies. At the plenary meeting of the fifth session, some members of parent commissions opposing the  school closures had the opportunity to address this issue in the council. These decisions have negative political consequences for local authorities, and were challenged in court.
• In Ternopil, according to observers, organizing and conducting public hearings on issues that are the most important to the community remains an open question. Despite assurances that such consultations will be held, neither drafts concerning the development of the city, nor the idea of the waste processing plant, which is already being implemented in some way, were open for public discussion.
• In Ivano-Frankivsk, according to the results of civic monitoring, neither the City Council commission norms nor the Regulations allow for the free presence of NGO representatives or neutral citizens at council commission meetings. In matters of openness and transparency of the City Council, we would only talk about intentions rather than actions. This is shown by the Regulations that  refer to the mandatory posting of all decisions and draft decisions, as well as Regulations on the website of the Ivano-Frankivsk city council, which posts a number of important public documents on the Council website. As of June 1, 2011, these plans had for the most part not been implemented.
• In Kryvyi Rig, the official website of the Kryvyi Rig City Council executive commission has no bios of the deputies. There is only information about party affiliation, level of education, position and place of work. The only full bio is of the mayor. In the city council regulations, there is no provision providing the opportunity for citizen participation in the meetings of the council and commissions.
• Experts drew attention to weaknesses that arise in the formation of civic councils under the mayor, city councils, or in local authorities, especially in terms of the staff of the relevant advisory bodies.
• In particular, experts in Kherson state that the civic council under the mayor consists of the leaders and NGOs loyal to the mayor, and their activities are little known in the community.
• In Kryvyi Rig, as of 7/1/2011 civic councils had not been created. In part, this is the fault of NGOs themselves.
• In Krivyi Rig, as of 7/1/2011 there are no effective civic councils in the city. Most NGOs act only with short-term political aims, and are not capable to work in association and collaboration.
• Experts in Odessa say that the existence of a number of civic councils is declared, such as youth or civic associations. Within this convocation of the City Council, there have not yet been elections to the first civic council, and the second one has not been convened.
• According to observations in Lutsk, while discussing solutions, the government focuses only on such instruments of communication with the community as public hearings and the civic council. However, experts state that the effectiveness of these tools is questionable, because even under the previous government, public hearings were mostly inefficient and civic activity was irregular and ineffective. Such mechanisms as a local initiative or a local referendum have not been used yet. In part, ineffective use of civic participation mechanisms by local authorities is explained not only by the actions of deputies or the mayor, but by the passivity of the community and lack of initiatives concerning the methods of communication.
• The results of civic monitoring and expert interviews in Vinnytsia showed that part of the strategic development of the city remains little known to the community and is developed for implementation by a narrow team of managers. The government doesn’t use effective tools in promoting governance practices among citizens. In particular, a very limited range of stakeholders can understand the processes and evaluate the effectiveness of the budget, economic and social benefits of decisions, strategic development of the city, etc.

Publication of draft decisions and access to information on the local governments’ activities

Observers have noted an increasing level of openness of local councils and mayors, especially in the context of the using new information technologies and upgrading websites. However, these positive findings relate only to those areas where local authorities have political will to systematically publicize information about their activities, and a desire to provide it fully to the community, not putting limitations on transparency by using selective criteria in publicizing certain messages, reports, draft resolutions.

• For example, according to the results of civic monitoring Vinnitsia has sufficient number of achievements in implementing the policy of openness and engagement of citizens ("e-government", "transparent office," certification under ISO anti-corruption standards, a system of institutions supporting the activity of citizen self-organizing bodies, a resource center for citizens’ appeals “24-hour guard" etc.). These measures at the level of local government and the mayor enhance citizens’ trust in authorities.
• According to civic monitoring in Lutsk, the operation of the new website of the City Council has created additional opportunities for residents to review draft decisions of the council and already adopted decisions. Current Regulations of the council also have a positive effect on this process. The regulations contain many provisions that promote greater transparency. In most cases, all procedures for passing documents to the Council and preparation for sessions take place in compliance with the regulations.
• Observers in Lviv also note that residents can observe plenary sessions on the Internet. Lviv experts indicate that both the mayor and political parties in the city council try to be open and transparent in their work. Within the period of monitoring, OPORA observers did not record attempts to restrict access to public information or violate citizen's right on access to public information from their side. However, in some places, observers noted a transition from effective communication through various means of communication to populism.
• Civic monitoring in Ternopil on open government has demonstrated that most experts believe the Council’s activities are quite transparent. This applies to the mayor’s openness and also to the publication of official information (including decisions made at sessions). At the same time, according to observations in the city, it turns out that the new local authorities have taken some steps that are perceived ambiguously by community (closure of clinics, construction of industrial waste processing enterprises within the city). There were no consultations with the community with respect to some issues (through public hearings or other means).
• At the same time, observers also recorded declining trends regarding the openness of local authorities, publicizing information by local councils about their activities, and lack of political will to openness and transparency of local authorities. Thus, civic monitoring showed that in some regions, the meetings of the local councils are not public, and in some places there is selective disclosure of draft decisions.
• In particular, experts point out that in Kryvyi Rih, citizens have no opportunity to attend sessions.
• Experts have noted that during the first through fourth sessions (November 2010-February 2011), the Donetsk City Council practiced selective disclosure of its decisions, while draft decisions are not made ​​public at all.
• In assessing the transparency of Rivne City Council and its openness to citizens, among the biggest shortcomings of its work is the following - local authorities do not involve the local community in discussing the draft decisions and do not allow them to submit their proposals. Experts state that the agenda and draft decisions of the next session of the city council are not publicized on the website of the Rivne City Council and in the newspaper "Seven Days" 20 days in advance before the meeting, as required by the Law of Ukraine "On Access to Public Information". Only one-third of the decisions taken by the deputies at the session are published on the official website and in the newspaper "Seven Days". Thus, the community is not only unable to influence local policy, but has no access to most of the decisions taken by the City Council.
• Observers in Ivano-Frankivsk state that the City Council decisions are in the public domain, available on its internet page, where one can also find the names of deputies and deputy commissioners. However, despite this positive fact, there remains the problem of access to drafts. As of June 1, there were no draft decisions in publicly accessible.

Many experts and observers hope that the situation will improve after the entry into force of the law "On Access to Public Information" and the mobilization of communities to use the opportunities offered by the law.

Features of the political structure of local government (the first six months after the local elections)

The majority of elected deputies are business people (managers of enterprises of state, municipal and private ownership). In different regions this figure ranges from 50 to 70%. The increase in the number of business people to local councils potentially creates more favorable conditions tfor designing and using various schemes of lobbying business interests in city councils. Under such conditions it is also possible to promote policy of protecting interests of business groups in the regions, which involves the risk of corruption.

Most local council deputies have higher education and are men.

In the regions, various peculiarities in the formation of a majority in local councils and the relationships of mayors with deputies are observed. Despite the general trend of increasing PoR influence after the 2010 local elections in Ukraine and the present trend toward continued reduction of attention to the initiatives and views of the opposition, there are regions where the majority of local councils shows striking regional differences.

• For example, according to the observations of OPORA experts in Donetsk, in the city council of the 6^th convocation, the further strengthening of a monopoly on local government and local policy by the Party of Regions is observed.
• A majority of the Kherson city council of the 6^th convocation was formed from representatives of the Party of Regions, and OPORA civic monitoring experts confirm that the proposals of deputies from opposition factions in the city council were almost never included onto the agenda of the plenary sessions of the council, and those few issues that were included to the agenda were put to the vote, but in most cases are deliberately not supported by the majority to show their lack of interest in considering such proposals. In such cases, one can observe trends of single-party dominance in some regions.
• Experts in Odessa say that the opposition is actually not formed in the local council. Thus, the coalition majority is in a strong position to freely make decisions that it supports. Protests by other factions do not influence the voting in the local council. In this City Council, a number of examples were noted when an issue had not acquired majority support, but later at the same plenary meeting, it was put to a vote and passed. In Vinnytsia, experts also note the weakness of the political opposition, which in its turn creates a vacuum in political discussions and forms dominant, singular opinions in the community. According to experts, the promotion of political dialogue would provide the opportunity to create an environment with a high level of political culture that would contribute to the stability of the local community’s social environment in Vinnytsa, and which would not depend on the national political challenges.
• According to observations, in some areas the monopoly in most local councils, particularly of the PoR, extends over the work of local council commissions. In part, the potential for this situation is created at the level of regulation of the City Council. For example, in the Donetsk city council, all the senior positions in the 12 standing commissions are taken by the Party of Regions, as the Council Regulation does not provide mechanisms for fraction-based distribution. This pro-government monopoly leads to a situation where the permanent council commissions do not inform the public about upcoming events and current results of its activities. Members of the Donetsk City Council take an inactive position regarding the consideration of the plenary session agenda.
• In Sumy, one can see the same prevalence of the majority, but a majority control by opposition political forces. For example, three major factions took leadership over the commissions: Batkivshchyna and Ridne Misto head three commissions each, while only one commission is headed by the Party of Regions. The Communist Party of Ukraine and Front of Change have their deputies in the board of standing commissions.

Today, in some regions of Ukraine, such political phenomena as the formation of local "minority government" is observed, when a political party that did not gain a majority of votes during the elections managed to form a majority. For example, in Rivne, after the 2010 local elections, 10 political parties got into the 6^th convocation of the Rivne City Council. The highest number of mandates was won by Batkivshchyna. At the same time, the majority of the city concentrated around the mayor, who is supported by the majority, which included representatives of eight political parties, in 

particular, the Party of Regions, Our Ukraine, All-Ukrainian Patriotic Union, Front for Change, UDAR, the People's Party, United Center and Strong Ukraine and two unaffiliated deputies (who ran under Batkivshchyna). In the opposition to the mayor there are Batkivshchyna and Svoboda. The majority (28) prevail over the opposition (27) by only one deputy. However, it does not prevent the opposition from voting with the majority on a large number of issues, and on some issues, like decisions on the organization of the work of the council or historical interpretation policy, the faction and the majority led by the mayor votes separately.

Civic monitoring showed that in some regions the political phenomenon of opposition weakness is observed when oppositional political parties do not offer constructive solutions and alternative ways of solving problems, and they build their work mostly around criticizing thedecisions of the majority. This positioning is strongly focused on the protesting electorate of the region. Thus, in Cherkasy, two factions are strongly opposing the mayor and the majority: the faction Batkivshchyna and the faction Ecology and Social Protection. These opposition forces are focused mainly on criticizing the majority and the mayor. They do not submit to the council any constructive suggestions or alternative ways of resolving issues. Experts state that this permanent confrontation does not allow these politicians to fulfill event a small amount of pre-election promises.

Experts point out that, for example, in Kryvyi Rih, no discussions are made at meetings of the council, and deputies have inactive and formal positions when considering the agenda of the plenary sessions. Thus, the overwhelming majority of decisions are voted in packages, when the facilitator of the meeting announces only the number of the decisions or regulation (but not actually the title/name of the decision), and, if deputies have no questions, the draft decision is put to vote without any debate. In most cases sponsors of the decisions do not even go to the podium to report. According to the monitoring, recognizing the lack of opportunities for their proposals to be adopted by voting, the minority faction stopped presenting alternatives, which negatively affects the quality of local policy.

The activity of local councils, priority issues, and fulfillment of election commitments by political parties

The studies and expert interviews[5] conducted by OPORA observers have found that, within the monitoring period, the city councils did not always effectively address issues directly-related to citizens’ life – in particular improving the quality of school education in the community, modernizing schools, computer equipment, upgrading materials and equipment material and technical basis, issues of collection, transport, recycling and disposal of waste, measures to rehabilitate people with disabilities and offering them disability-friendly infrastructure, repair and construction of infrastructure..^[6] It should be noted that the foundation for such trends was indirectly laid before the local elections. Thus, even in the period when expert interviews were conducted by OPORA ^[7] a month before the local elections, in most cases, experts said that they were not familiar with the pre-election programs of political parties for the election campaign. For example, in Rivne 84% of those interviewed were not familiar with parties’ pre-election programs, and 41% in Lugansk. Only 1 - 2% of experts believe that the pre-election programs presented by the parties fully reflect the problems of socio-economic and cultural development, and only 6 to 10 % of experts believe that the issues are somewhat reflected (depending on the regions that participated in the survey ). So, this could indicate a low level of efficiency of political parties’ efforts to communicate their platforms to voters, lack of awareness of community problems, and partial orientation of political parties to populism rather than real development of policy decisions and public debate.

An analysis of the decisions adopted during sessions of local councils, has shown that the priorities of local governments to not always meet the expectations of communities regarding the formation and implementation of local policies in the socio-economic and humanitarian spheres (youth, education, health).

Most of the issues addressed by local councils relate to land issues. The number of "land" initiatives during a half a year of monitoring may reach 80% out of all the decisions approved. Partly this is due to objective reasons - the practice of land allocation on the basis of the right of citizens to the free provision of 10 acres of land for individual house building.[8]First of all, in reality, almost all land issues are initiated by private individuals, associations or businesses, while the City Council departments are required to process them and submit to the City Council meeting. Socioeconomic, humanitarian and infrastructure issues are presented by departments of the City Council, and draft decisions are submitted to the session by various departments. Their number is smaller. However, civic monitoring has shown that in some regions, the consideration of land issues is not transparent and balanced in approach. For example, Opora experts note that the Odessa city council fails to adhere to the regulations regarding the publication of draft decisions in advance. Draft decisions on the most critical (land) issues are distributed right before the session without previous consideration.

On a related note, the land commission are the most popular among deputies of local authorities. For example, in Chernivtsi the commission on land, buildings and construction includes 17 members, the commission on health, labor and social welfare has 4 deputies, the commission for education, science, culture, sports and youth policy - 4 deputies. In Rivne 11 deputies expressed the wish to work in the commission on land, buildings and construction, while only 5 wanted to work in the commission on science, education, culture, spiritual rebirth, youth, sports, relations with public associations and mass media.

• In the Lviv City Council, financial commissions were the most popular among the deputies: the commission on communal property, commission of engineering economy, transport and communications, commission of economic policy, entrepreneurship, investment and external relations, commission of financing and budget planning, commission on architecture, town planning and protection of historic environment ( 9 deputies each). The smallest number of deputies - 4 – made up the commission on deputies’ activities and legality.
• In Sumy, during the process of standing commissions’ formation, a violation of the Norm on the number of deputies of Standing Commissions of the 6^th convocation was noted. Thus, the commission on housing, welfare, emergency, environment, energy, transport and communication comprises 14 deputies, while the maximum allowed is 11.

Other issues addressed by the local councils are the division of community property and leasing of communal property, selling property, providing discounts for the use of resources, and registration of ownership.

At the same time, experts in virtually all the regions in which the monitoring was conducted indicate either that local councils and mayors only have the intention to address priority issues or that local councils do not pay attention to small business development, housing reform, or education issues. For example, according to the result of civic monitoring in Sumy, experts state that among the priority issues discussed in the Sumy city council, the top issue (in terms of the frequency of inclusion of these issues to the agenda and the number of decisions taken) are land issues, which clearly contrasts with community priorities rated by the experts in the course of the survey. Unlike the deputies, the experts drew most of their attention to cultural, educational and housing issues.

Thus, the following conclusions can be made: the priorities of local elected bodies differ from the priorities identified by surveyed local experts and do not meet the expectations of the community. In many cases, one can talk about elected officials’ intention to address concerns rather than about active steps to do so.