By SARAH BEN-NUN JUNE 16, 2026 16:11 State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman warned Tuesday that local authorities are falling short on basic systems that shape daily life in Israel, from traffic cameras to social workers carrying wartime caseloads to buildings that still may not be safe years after the state identified them as dangerous.
In his annual report on local government, Englman found that municipalities and government ministries often know what needs fixing but have not completed the work to fix it. He called for clearer limits on enforcement cameras, capped social workers’ caseloads, a national urban renewal plan, faster business licensing reform, local climate plans, cyber monitoring, and renewed supervision of Pal-Kal buildings.
The report is less about one dramatic failure and more about a pattern: local government is on the front line, but too often without the rules, budgets, data, or follow-up needed to work properly.
On traffic enforcement cameras, Englman said local authorities’ use of cameras to enforce parking and public transportation lane rules “makes enforcement more efficient,” but warned that it “may harm the privacy of passersby, and therefore requires careful examination and proportionate and limited use.”
The audit found that only six of 38 local authorities with public transportation lanes had published on their websites that they enforced bus-lane offenses using cameras.
Traffic on Highway 2 near Netanya. Although the Transportation Ministry has announced that the elderly are more likely to be injured or killed in road accidents, it doesn’t state whether they are pedestrians or drivers. (credit: FLASH90) In the four authorities examined - Herzliya, Hadera, Ramat Gan, and Binyamina-Givat Ada - 189 cameras were used, around 121,000 tickets were issued in 2024, and the fines were worth around NIS 44 million.
The problem, Englman found, was not only how many tickets were issued, but how the cameras were managed.
Some authorities kept images in sufficient quality for inspectors to identify passersby. Binyamina-Givat Ada kept filming with four enforcement cameras even after it stopped using them for parking enforcement in March 2024 and shifted them to security use.
The problem goes beyond local authorities
The Transportation Ministry , meanwhile, had not advanced the process of approaching local authorities that do not enforce bus-lane offenses and asking them to begin, even though it received that authority at the end of 2022.
“Local authorities must use enforcement cameras in a proportionate and fair manner, and for the purpose of achieving the goal of enforcing traffic laws, while protecting the right to privacy of passersby,” Englman said.
He recommended that authorities periodically ask a simple question: Does this camera still serve the reason it was put here? If not, he said, they should stop filming or move it.
The war also runs through the report. Englman said the events of Oct. 7 and the war that followed “demonstrated the importance of the role of social workers in social services departments.”
But the audit found that those departments were already struggling, and the war made the strain worse.
The war has made the issue greater
In 2024, there were 1,155 unfilled social worker positions in municipal social services departments nationwide, equal to 16% of positions. In the authorities examined, the share of unfilled positions ranged from 1% in Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut to 34% in Kiryat Motzkin.
The Welfare Ministry still had not set the maximum number of cases that may be assigned to each social worker, even though more than two decades had passed since the relevant allocation formula was set.
In a questionnaire conducted for the audit, 74% of responding social workers said the workload in their department had increased to a large or very large extent since the outbreak of the war. Another 54% said they had experienced burnout to a large or very large extent because of the war.
Englman recommended that the Welfare Ministry work with local authorities to retain social workers and quickly finalize the maximum caseload, especially because demand for welfare services is expected to grow.
On urban renewal, Englman described the policy as “a strategic tool” for planning and construction, particularly because Israel needs more housing and older buildings must be protected against earthquakes , rockets, and missiles.
Magen David Adom responds after a Tel Aviv building is hit by an Iranian rocket. (credit: Courtesy Magen David Adom) But the audit found that the projects most likely to move forward are the ones that make financial sense for developers. That leaves many peripheral cities, where the need may be urgent, but the economics are weaker.
Some 58% of urban renewal projects are being promoted or implemented in the Central and Tel Aviv districts. In 23 evacuation-and-construction projects promoted in Beit She’an, Tiberias, Safed, and Kiryat Shmona between 2017 and 2025 - all highly…
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