Government - Local Background to this section Return to the Local Government list Delivering governance A vast majority of problems facing Roma in the field of institutional discrimination involve local governments. It is the local community governments who agree to illicit conditions on normative funding to subject normal Roma children to segregated educational denial. It is the local government staff and education department staff who "mind" and sustain these children in circumstances of educational denial. It is they who do not make up roads in Roma sections of some villages exposing the Roma to dusty conditions in the summer and having to walk through mud, to get to their homes, in the winter. Relationships with local authority officials are often characetrised by a patronising attitude of the local government officials doing "favours" for the Roma as opposed to simply carying out their duties. At a sinister extreme, associated with the conditions of parents whose children are forced into Special Schools, is the offer of small bribes to avert complaints or implied or real threats of non-payment of welfare if the parents "create problems". The process of administrative devolution which occurred during the early 1990s has distanced central inspection and effective audit from what local authorities get up to. Or at least, it becomes easier for central government to raise "plausible denials" of any responsibility of the effects of local racism and discrimination. Although when one analyses the "process" it is clear, for example in the case of Special Schools, that there is very close collaboration between central government and local authorities, on what constitutes criminal conduct. This section will report on this sort of issue.