Kirovohrad Oblast Council ignores inconvenient questions in a query by "Nova Hazeta"

The Kirovohrad Oblast Council ignored four out of eight questions in a query filed by the Kropyvnytskyi print publication "Nova Hazeta". The officials claimed that answering some of the questions implies creating new information and left them unanswered. Namely, these concerned the enforcement of the court ruling on Vyacheslav Vandrashek's reinstatement as the director of the Kirovohrad Oblast Academic Theater director. The newspaper's chief editor, Inna Danylchenko, reported this to the IMI representative in Kirovohrad oblast.

As early as April 29, the Leninsky District Court in Kropyvnytskyi overruled the Oblast Council's decision to dismiss Vyacheslav Vandrashek from the post of director of the Coryphaei Theater. However, this ruling has not been enforced to date. In their query, "Nova Hazeta" asked whether the Oblast Council plans to implement the court's ruling, what sum Vyacheslav Vandrashek would receive as compensation for the forced layoff, etc. These were the topics that the Oblast Council chair Yuriy Drozd, with whose name the reply was signed, decided to skip.

IMI lawyer Roman Holovenko notes: if the sum of compensation for Vandrashek's forced layoff was listed in the court ruling, then the Oblast Council has this information and should have provided a comprehensive answer to the query. This is in case the Council received a copy of the court ruling.

As for the reinstatement, which the journalists asked about, the statement that no major legal action has been taken on this issue can be formally considered an answer.

The other four questions were about the theater's budget issues and the salary of the acting director, Yevhen Lavrenchuk. The Kirovohrad Oblast Council instructed the theater to answer them. These answers were provided, but the institution said that data on the manager's salary is personal information and can only be made public in exceptional cases.