Rebudgeting in Czech regions: Did the recent external shocks change the praxis?

Czech regions approved during the course of 2021 additional revenue and expenditure amounting to more than 80% of the original approved budget. This number is slowly growing over the last decade and the additional expenditure exceeds additional revenue. There is substantial heterogeneity among the 13 regions, and the differences among them seem quite stable over time (based on the aggregate numbers). The purpose of the paper is twofold: (1) Explore and describe the budgeting and rebudgeting process in Czech regions. It is guided by the same regulation as municipalities, but to our knowledge little to no research dealt with the actual praxis in this tier of local government. We are interested in the timeline of the process and the role of various actors. (2) Map the impacts of the two recent external shocks on rebudgeting character and magnitude. Both the covid-19 pandemic and the refugee wave after Russia invaded Ukraine strongly affected regions and their budgets due to their assigned competencies in the areas of healthcare, social care, crisis management, and security. The description of the budgeting and rebudgeting process will be based on information provided by the individual regions, e.g., budget guidelines, decisions of the regional assembly, and minutes from other relevant regional bodies. The majority of the information is nowadays publicly available on the web pages, the rest will be requested. If necessary/useful responsible officials will be approached directly with specific questions. The impact of the external shocks will be mapped using data on budgets and their execution provided by the Ministry of Finance in its database Monitor. In the first phase of the research descriptive statistics and relevant tests will be used. Based on the first results appropriate method for further analysis will be chosen. Data for all 13 regions (capital Prague is excluded) and the time period 2015 to 2022 will be utilized. The proposed research will reveal the role of the executive and legislative branches of the regional governments in the rebudgeting process in relation to the automatism caused by intergovernmental fiscal flows during the fiscal year.