IN BRIEF

Published: December 19, 2012 (Issue # 1740)

Budget Bonuses

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko has halved the annual bonuses of the six deputy governors who work at City Hall and scrapped the bonuses of other officials entirely, citing disappointment with the way the city budget was handled in 2012.

Poltavchenko said that if, by the end of the year, a number of the city’s committees that have failed to spend the budget funds allocated to them for various projects do not carry out 98 percent of the planned work and projects for which the money was allocated, then the bonuses of the heads of the committees, as well as their deputies and heads of internal departments, will be halved, Interfax reported.

Poltavchenko ordered the bonuses of all the deputy governors to be halved, except for that of Sergei Vyazalov.

Vyacheslav Semenko, the former head of the city’s Construction Committee who currently works as the governor’s advisor, will get no bonus at all, along with all the department heads listed as working for the committee as of June 1. The reason cited for the decision was the committee’s poor performance. Andrei Arteyev, the current head of the committee, said that when he assumed the position, the committee had spent just two percent of the funds allocated to it for executing various projects.

Arteyev said the committee would have spent no more than 50 percent of its allocated funding by the end of the year.

Airport Access

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City Hall is to choose between an aeroexpress train, a tram and a metro line to connect the city with Pulkovo Airport.

The transport project is to be selected during the first quarter of the next year, City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said.

Poltavchenko said the authorities are considering building a metro line directly to the airport.