Why do 3,177 towns face Budapest, not their own residents?

Indoklás

This is the general-purpose operating grant — the block that funds municipal administration, the statutory minimum of local self-government. Local self-government, including a funded municipal tier, is established by the Fundamental Law (Article 31–35) and is a constitutional precondition of the kind the framework recognises: the institutional machinery through which a defined community makes binding collective decisions about itself. The grant itself is not the object of the classical-liberal critique. The object of the critique is that it is a *grant* at all rather than locally-raised revenue. A municipality funded by a central formula faces the allocator, not its own ratepayers; the feedback loop that disciplines local spending — residents who pay the local tax and can see what it buys — is broken when the money arrives from Budapest. The defensible reform is not to cut the operating function but to restore the local revenue base (a genuine local PIT surcharge or a retained property-tax share) so that the grant shrinks as own-revenue grows. Until that structural reform is enacted, an outright cut would simply strand statutory obligations the municipalities cannot fund. The honest interim classification is a nominal freeze: hold the line, let real-terms erosion at 2–3% inflation apply gentle pressure, and treat the restoration of local fiscal autonomy as the substantive reform.