Israeli Finance Committee Votes on Millions Without Proper Transparency or Legal Validity

The legal advisor to the Knesset Finance Committee, Attorney Shlomit Ehrlich, declared this week that recent votes on budget transfers conducted by the committee are illegal and invalid. This ruling highlights a severe democratic crisis in Israel, where political cynicism has undermined parliamentary oversight of public funds. The problematic practice involves submitting last-minute budget transfer requests, sometimes amounting to hundreds of millions or even billions of shekels, without providing Knesset members with adequate information beforehand. This leaves lawmakers effectively unable to make informed decisions, reducing them to rubber-stamping decisions influenced by Treasury officials and narrow coalition interests, often under the auspices of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and with the knowledge of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This flawed procedure is not new and has faced sharp criticism from the Supreme Court and legal advisors to the Knesset. The court has repeatedly emphasized that reallocating funds and making budget changes before official committee approval is blatantly illegal. Previous cases revealed that millions were transferred to ultra-Orthodox institutions before committee discussion, a practice now exposed again in recent committee sessions. During a marathon night session chaired by Hanoch Milwiczky, the committee approved a 155 million shekel transfer from the government housing budget to housing construction, with the proposal released only hours before the vote. Documents also revealed that the government had already exceeded the approved budget by about 69 million shekels before the committee deliberated, a move described by the legal advisor as fundamentally flawed and illegal.

When opposition members protested the lack of data by walking out, the chairman proceeded with rapid votes, prompting the legal advisor to declare the process legally void. This troubling pattern, where the government treats the Finance Committee as a mere tool and withholds information from its members, must end immediately. It severely damages public trust and undermines the Knesset’s role in overseeing the executive branch. The current government and the next administration to be elected this fall must recognize that the state budget is not a secret fund for last-minute manipulations. The rule of law demands full transparency, advance distribution of materials, and thorough public debate. Reform must begin now to eliminate this harmful last-minute practice.