Background
Jointly with the Municipality of Stara Zagora and other NGOs and on the basis of 110 generalized municipal regulations, the BSEC has prepared seven draft regulations on priority topics for the municipality. The texts of the draft regulations have been published in a leaflet and sent to the municipalities. Their use shortens the time needed to prepare the corresponding documents in the municipalities, where they are lacking, and the leaflet provides ideas for improving the current regulations in municipalities where such documents have been previously adopted.
The Law on Local government and Local Administration (LLGLA) has given the municipalities different rights, one of which is the right to adopt their own normative documents regulations, rules, etc. Other laws even set the obligations to the municipalities to prepare such documents in a short time. In most cases the municipalities did not receive methodological assistance to the document preparation. For this reason each municipality has created its own "local legislation."

Practice
The idea of the project was to create an integral package of municipal draft regulations, which could put together the experience of many municipalities and help the councilors and mayors in adopting the lawful regulations. Through this project the BSEC aimed at being an intermediary between the municipalities in order to strengthen the sharing of information, and between the municipalities and the citizens by introducing elements of a broader democracy into the discussions on the regulations.
In March 1997 a survey was carried out among the Bulgarian municipalities. The results showed that the regulations have different importance for the local authorities. The regulations on "municipal property" and "public order" were identified as being of top priority (80-75 %), followed by the regulations on the "municipal companies and enterprises" and "sanitation and ecology" (55-50%) and on "trade" and "construction" (35-30 %). The desire for setting up an information database for exchange of experience between the municipalities and for establishing more active contacts among the municipalities was the common desire. More than half of the respondents have expressed their desire to see such an institution established at the Council of Ministers or at the Association of Bulgarian Municipalities.
Parallel to the survey, texts of the municipal regulations were also collected. Though that coincided with the parliamentary elections, more than 110 regulations were collected from 27 municipalities from all over the country. The most active were those which had contacts or good relations with the local NGOs, which expected and saw the benefit from a partnership with such organizations.
The next step was the generalization and analysis of the regulations received and the drafting of new regulations. This was possible due to the partnership between the BSEC, the Municipality of Stara Zagora and other NGOs. Seven draft regulations were prepared on priority topics public order, sanitation and ecology, trade and advertisement, transport activities, construction, ritual activities and municipal markets and market places.
The draft regulations have synthesized the variety of norms on different aspects. They have been supplemented with texts. In this way the formal possibility of direct citizens participation in the municipal government was realized in part, a possibility that is provided by Article 50 of the LLGLA.

Results
The texts of the draft regulations were published in a leaflet (known as "the green booklet") and distributed to the municipalities with short recommendations in May 1998.
The use of these texts leads to shortening of the time for the preparation of the corresponding documents in the municipalities where such documents are lacking, the texts also provide ideas about how to improve the current regulations in the municipalities where such documents are present. This process is already a fact in the Municipality of Stara Zagora, where on the basis of these developments, new regulations have been adopted.
BSEC has received many letters from the municipalities which highly assess and support the accomplished work.