Functioning
Legislative power within a powiat is vested in an elected council (rada powiatu), while local executive power is vested in the starosta, who is elected by that council. The administrative offices headed by the starosta are called the starostwo. However in city counties these institutions do not exist separately – their powers and functions are exercised by the city council (rada miasta), the directly-elected mayor (burmistrz or prezydent), and the city offices (urząd miasta).
In some cases a powiat has its seat outside its own territory. For example, Poznań County (powiat poznański) has its offices in Poznań, although Poznań is itself a city county, and is therefore not part of Poznań County.
Powiats have relatively limited powers, since many local and regional matters are dealt with either at gmina or voivodeship level. Some of the main areas in which the powiat authorities have decision-making powers and competences include:
- education at high-school level (primary and middle schools are run by the gminas)
- healthcare (at county level)
- public transport
- maintenance of certain designated roads
- land surveying
- issuing of work permits to foreigners
- vehicle registration (see Polish car number plates)
Read more about this topic: Powiat
Famous quotes containing the word functioning:
“Ideals possess the strange quality that if they were completely realized they would turn into nonsense. One could easily follow a commandment such as “Thou shalt not kill” to the point of dying of starvation; and I might establish the formula that for the proper functioning of the mesh of our ideals, as in the case of a strainer, the holes are just as important as the mesh.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“Anyone who wishes to combine domestic responsibilities and paid employment with the least stress and most enjoyment might start by pondering this paradox: the first step to better functioning is to stop blaming herself for not functioning well enough.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“The trouble is that the expression ‘material thing’ is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for ‘sense-datum’; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he ‘perceives.’”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)