The survey, commissioned by the Association of Municipalities of the Republic of Croatia, tackled seven areas that can potentially influence corruption perception: budget, property management, planning and zoning, public procurement, employment, transparency of activities, and conflict of interest.
According to the survey, 13 of the 15 surveyed municipalities have active web sites, but only one publishes materials from the municipal council's sessions on the Internet.
The authors -- Teodor Antic and Ivica Malatestinic -- concluded that web sites were not used at all for reducing the corruption perception.
Therefore they recommend that municipality authorities should use web sites to offer information about their work, besides posting general information there.
Although transparency in the adoption of municipal budgets can contribute to reducing the corruption perception, the survey showed that only five municipalities consulted the public when elaborating their budgets.
When it comes to planning, 11 out of the 15 municipalities have not published their physical plans on their web sites, but those plans are available to the public in other ways.
According to an opinion poll conducted by Transparency International Croatia in 2005, as many as 73 percent of respondents believed that corruption was widespread or very much widespread in local self-government units.
Antic said that this opinion poll was not about the presence of corruption but about the perception of corruption.
The anti-corruption council's vice-president, Ana Lovrin, said that corruption perception was bigger than the real proportions of that problem.