In the course of the meeting, speakers discussed problems of and prospects for local government reform. The President said that the financial and economic base of local government needed reinforcement and instructed that a package of decrees and laws regulating the reform should be drafted by June.
Possible ways of rechannelling tax receipts to local government budgets were discussed.
Mr Putin emphasised the need to create an effective and transparent system of supervising the work of local governments and to properly organise elections to local bodies of authority.