Gimcheon lawmaker urges stronger oversight of outsourced projects and public institutions

Gimcheon City Council lawmaker Park Hee-hyeon urged the city to strengthen oversight of its privately outsourced projects, local subsidy programs and affiliated public institutions, and to ensure greater administrative accountability, in a five-minute floor speech at the 262nd extraordinary session Friday.

"Gimcheon's 2026 general account budget allocates about 60 billion won ($44.5 million) for private outsourcing and roughly 150 billion won for major local subsidy projects," Park said. "Rather than simply handing off work and providing funding, the city must follow through to verify that the money is being spent properly and that citizens are seeing real results."

Park said paperwork alone cannot guarantee that a project is running well. "Perfect documents do not mean a perfect project," she said, adding that on-site inspections must go beyond document-based audits and settlement reviews.

She proposed several remedies: tying the results of on-site inspections to budget decisions and contract renewals; building an integrated management system that tracks each department's projects, budgets and outcomes in one place; allocating funds based on performance and scaling back or reforming programs that repeatedly underperform; and strengthening fairness checks on personnel and operations at affiliated public institutions and contracted or subsidized organizations.

Park said fair procedures must be followed in the appointment and reappointment of agency heads and executives, as well as in staff hiring, and that personal ties between retired civil servants and related institutions must not be allowed to influence personnel decisions or oversight.

"Gimcheon must move from an administration that simply delegates to one that takes responsibility, and pursue real improvements so that taxpayers' money is spent transparently and efficiently," Park said.