In a report to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in mid-December, an advisory panel on local autonomy recommended that local governments be allowed to hold assembly sessions throughout the year so that a wide range of local residents can serve as local assembly members. But the panel opted to postpone the reintroduction of a system in which local residents can make a direct request to their local government for raising or lowering local taxes by collecting a certain number of signatures.

This month the panel's discussions are scheduled to move to a new topic — local autonomy in large urban areas. But the panel should continue to discuss the direct claim system on local tax rate changes and other earlier topics because these concern important means of expanding local residents' participation in local government.

The Local Autonomy Law originally included the direct claim system on local tax rate changes. But because a series of direct requests to lower local tax rates were made under the system in years immediately after the war when the economy was in extremely bad shape, a provision dropping the system was inserted into the law.