Numbers of local government units 2019

A reader notified me that the Department of Local Administration (DLA) also updated their statistics page with December 20th as its reference date. What was confusing is that the numbers of local government units as of December 31st from DOPA differed from those in the provincial breakdown - but once looking into the XLS file itself it showed that it was only this one HTML page not updated.

The interesting things about this update however are more subtile.

• It was the third time DLA updated that page in 2019 - in June, September and now December. Normally it was only updated once a year with the end of the fiscal year in September.
• The XLS file listing all municipalities and TAO now has a new sheet which lists the TAO with less than 2,000 citizens. I suspect this means that these 30 TAO are about to get merged into neighboring units.

I also used the opportunity to update the municipality sheet in my Thai province XLS, and to my shame even noticed that I had four municipalities created in 2013 missing in that.

BTW: The numbers of the local goverments will change this year for sure, the first status change was already announced in the Royal Gazette (Ban Krot in Ayutthaya [Gazette]), and some more can be found in the board meeting transcripts from law.moi.go.th which I can hardly access at all.

Local government statistics updated

Normally, the Department of Local Administration updates their list of the local governments once a year at around the end of the fiscal year in October. Oddly, this year there was an update in March, but now effective December 1st there was another one. The only numbers which changed were the TAO, as Wang Nuea TAO was merged into Wang Nuea municipality, which became effective December 1 - thus the tables were updated exactly with that change.

• Provincial administrative organizations (PAO, องค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัด): 76
• Municipality (Thesaban, เทศบาล): 2441
  • City (Thesaban Nakhon, เทศบาลนคร): 30
  • Town (Thesaban Mueang, เทศบาลเมือง): 178
  • Subdistrict municipality (Thesaban Tambon, เทศบาลตำบล): 2233
• Subdistrict administrative organizations (TAO, องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล): 5333
• Special administrative units (องค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ): 2

Source: summary_25601201
Little nitpicking - the English website of the DLA has a very outdated list of the subdivision numbers showing values from 2014.

The Excel sheets with the detailed data were also updated. I have so far only checked for the differences in the TAO sheet, and it seems the only changes (apart from the remove of Wang Nuea of course) are corrections to the population numbers which were wrong for some entries in the March version.

One new sheet has showed up, which collects the addresses of the TAO offices. Sadly, it does not include the geographic location, and since translating a Thai address into a geographical location is almost impossible it doesn't help me in adding the locations to my data.

The sheet with the numbers by province  is now translated into XML to make it easily machine-readable, but I guess the spreadsheet with the numbers by province since 2007 compiled from all the previous DLA lists is of more interest.

Local governments Small-Medium-Large

It took a bit longer than expected to work through the Excel sheets published by DOLA recently to extract the data from there and compile it to be used in my XML files. There were quite a lot of local governments misspelled in the Excel sheets, in some cases an already announced name change wasn't included in them, and also in several cases the district was wrong, so it took some time to match all the data rows from the Excel sheets with the corresponding item in my syntax. The result is a bit lengthy in XML however...


I now have the area value, the DOLA code (which sadly isn't stable like the codes from DOPA) and the Small-Medium-Large assignment for each of the local governments. Though it'd be most interesting to compare these SML assignments over time, an overview of the current numbers is also interesting.

Type	Small	Medium	Large	Unknown
TAO	5120	177	35	2
Thesaban Tambon	1875	341	13	4
Thesaban Mueang	17	135	26	0
Thesaban Nakhon	0	25	5	0

A bit strange are the six local governments where the Excel sheets left the SML level empty. As these level are about the economic power of the local government, those in the Large category (ขนาดใหญ่) are the prime candidates to get upgraded to a higher municipal level. It'd be interesting to compare with an older table to see whether this guess matches with reality. I have saved the Excel sheet from DOLA since 2010, so its just the time which is the limiting factor in creating such a statistics.

Fun fact - when looking for an image to add to this post, most of the results for ขนาดใหญ่ ขนาดกลาง ขนาดเล็ก where anal plugs...

Local government data updated by DOLA

The Department of Local Administration has updated their list of the local administrations, now being as of March 31 2017. The actual numbers haven't changed since the last update, as the last municipal change was the upgrade of Pa Sak TAO in November 2015.

• Provincial administrative organizations (PAO, องค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัด): 76
• Municipality (Thesaban, เทศบาล): 2441
  • City (Thesaban Nakhon, เทศบาลนคร): 30
  • Town (Thesaban Mueang, เทศบาลเมือง): 178
  • Subdistrict municipality (Thesaban Tambon, เทศบาลตำบล): 2233
• Subdistrict administrative organizations (TAO, องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล): 5334
• Special administrative units (องค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ): 2

Source: summary_25600331

The other files updated are more interesting, as these Excel sheets include the area, population, and the sub-level (Small, Medium, Large). There is one file for the municipalities and one for the TAO.

As DOLA has no unique and stable identifier code for each local administrative unit, and even the one they use isn't included into these sheets, I have to finally do the long-planned programming to be able to convert the data in these sheets into something which fits my XMLs, especially to be able to compare the current data with the previous sheets, for example to see how many for the local governments had changed their sub-level.

NCPO Announcement 29/2016

Today, the 29th announcement of the National Council for Peace and Order of this year (คำสั่งหัวหน้าคณะรักษาความสงบแห่งชาติ ที่ ๒๙/๒๕๕๙) was announced in the Royal Gazette, which by its publication became active law. This announcement deals with the local government administrators and councilors in case of a change in the municipal status. So far, whenever a municipality or a subdistrict administrative organization changes its administrative status, the mayor and the council have to vacate their office and stand for a new election. Especially for the council this is logical, as with the change of status the size of the council changes, thus the previously elected council doesn't fit anymore. Thus, so far usually all the municipal upgrades were done whenever the terms of either the council and/or the mayor ends, and a new election was pending anyway. However, in some cases the time till the next election was quite long, as the Election Commission first has to come up with a new constituency outline matching the new size of the council.

However, since the coup in 2014 there were no elections for the local governments anymore, by announcements 85 and 86 all of the local elections were halted and those mayors and councilors in office were given an indefinite extension of their term by announcement 1/2015. As even for a nation election the schedule is still unsure and depends on the constitutional referendum, those less important local elections certainly have to wait even longer.

I am not sure if this announcement somehow relates with an announcement by the Department of Local Administration from last week titled "แนวทางการแก้ไขปัญหาและผลกระทบจากการปรับโครงสร้างเทศบาล" (way to solve municipal restructure) - which if I understand it correctly suggests that TAO with more than 20 million Baht income should be upgraded to municipalities.

Local administration numbers October 2012

The Department of Local Administration (DOLA) has published the numbers of the various local administrative entities at the end of the fiscal year, i.e. October 1 2012. This thus includes all the municipal changes in the past fiscal year - the central administrative subdivisions are not part of this release, as these are under the responsibility of another department - and except a few new Muban there were no changes in those numbers anyway.

• PAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัด): 76
• Municipalities (เทศบาล, Thesaban): 2266
  • City municipalities (เทศบาลนคร, Thesaban Nakhon): 29
  • Town municipalities (เทศบาลเมือง, Thesaban Mueang): 167
  • Subdistrict municipalities (เทศบาลตำบล, Thesaban Tambon): 2070
• TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล): 5509
• Special administrative areas (องค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ): 2

Comparing to the numbers of last year (though the list was from DOPA then), the municipal numbers have changed - 2 new cities, 12 more towns, and 170 more subdistrict municipalities, and 184 TAO less. Though a few of the TAO were directly upgraded to towns, the two new cities were towns before, so there were a few more than 184 municipal changes this year. I am now waiting for the list of all the changes to be updated, I am not sure if the board meeting transcripts are complete or an already approved changed was not executed.

DOLA municipality changes updated

When some time ago I discovered the DOLA municipal change documents for fiscal year 2011 well before the fiscal year ended, there were two possible explanations for this early posting - either there were no further municipal changes planned for the fiscal year, or there will be an update of that document later on. Now the document with the changes for fiscal year 2012 - which begun October 1st - has been posted already, and at the same time the one for 2011 was updated, thus it was option two.

However, giving a table with all the entries would be quite lengthy (and take a lot of time to compile), since there are 42 TAO upgraded to subdistrict municipalities in September, and another 17 in October. Also, four subdistrict municipalities and two TAO are already upgraded (or set to be upgraded) to towns in fiscal year 2012. The sheet with the administrative data will contain all the changes soon.

Entity number statistics

Last week, the Department of Local Administration not uploaded the list of municipal changes in the current fiscal year, they also added an updated version of their various lists, including the one with the numbers of the various local administrative units. As of June 20 2011, there are

• 76 provincial administrative organizations (PAO), though the one for Bueng Kan isn't elected yet
  
• 2010 municipalities - 27 cities, 145 towns and 1838 subdistrict municipalities
  
• 5765 subdistrict administrative organizations (TAO)
  
• 2 special administrative areas (Bangkok and Pattaya)
  

Interestingly, just now I noticed the corresponding list from the Department of Provincial Administration has been updated as well, though it was already signed on April 20. Thus, as of March 31 2011, there are

• 76 provinces
  
• 878 districts (not including those within Bangkok)
  
• 7255 subdistricts (not including those within Bangkok)
  
• 74955 administrative villages
  
• 2010 municipalities - 26 cities, 144 towns and 1840 subdistrict municipalities
  
• 5765 subdistrict administrative organizations (TAO)
  
• 2 special administrative areas (Bangkok and Pattaya)
  

Comparing with last year, apart from the municipal changes there was of course one new province together with its PAO, and also just one new administrative village (created March 2010 in Surin).

Municipal changes in fiscal year 2011

With the lack of the meeting transcripts, the earliest I was expecting to know the complete municipal changes in this fiscal year (which started in October 2010) when the Department of Local Administration compiles their annual report and posts it on their local administration data page. Normally this happens around the end of the fiscal year, so it was quite surprising that already today a new word document was added to that page, which contains the whole list of municipal changes from October 1 2010 till June 20 2011. I can only suspect that no further changes are planned till October, maybe due to the forthcoming election - or they will update the document again later. Anyway, in the table below I list them all sorted by their date of becoming effective, including links to this blog and the Royal Gazette in case the change was announced already. Only the two latest ones are still pending the announcement in the Royal Gazette.

October 8	TAO Du Tai, Nan to subdistrict municipality (ทต.ดู่ใต้)	Blog, Gazette
October 28	TAO Bu Kraeng, Surin to subdistrict municipality (ทต.บุแกรง)	Blog, Gazette
October 28	Ton Pao subdistrict municpality, Chiang Mai to town (ทม.ต้นเปา)	Blog, Gazette
November 10	Wang Nam Yen subdistrict municpality, Sa Kaeo to town (ทม.วังน้ำเย็น) includes merge with TAO Wang Nam Yen	Blog, Gazette
November 11	Om Noi town, Nakhon Pathom to city (ทน.อ้อมน้อย)	Blog, Gazette
February 10	Ang Sila subdistrict municpality, Chonburi to town (ทม.อ่างศิลา)	Blog, Gazette
April 29	Rangsit town, Pathum Thani town to city (ทน.รังสิต)	Gazette
May 13	Khao Rub Chang subdistrict municpality, Songkhla to town (ทม.เขารูปช้าง)	Blog, Gazette
May 26	Wichian Buri subdistrict municpality, Phetchabun to town (ทม.วิเชียรบุรี)
June 20	Wang Saphung subdistrict municpality, Loei to town (ทม.วังสะพุง)

Municipality Day

While looking though the "interesting articles" section of the website of the Department of Local Administration (DOLA), I stumbled on one which was titled สาร รัฐมนตรีว่าการกระทรวงมหาดไทย เนื่องใน "วันเทศบาล" วันที่ 24 เมษายน พุทธศักราช 2550 (Speech of the Minister of Interior on the Municipality Day April 24 2007). Now just few months ago I wrote about the newly introduced "Day of Local Administration" which includes the municipalities as well, so I was a bit surprised to see that the municipalities now have two commemorative days.

The Municipality Day (วันเทศบาล) was introduced in 1990, at least in was officially announced in the Royal Gazette in September 1989. If I read the text of this announcement correctly it does not give the rationale for choosing this date, but I can suggest a very likely explanation - on April 24 1934 the first Thesaban Act was promulgated by publishing it in the Royal Gazette.

So yet another entry in my Google Calendar, so I won't miss any official celebration of this kind in case I am in Thailand on any such special days.

DOLA municipal statistics 2010

The Thai fiscal year has just ended on September 30, and few days later the Department of Local Administration (DOLA) already made the latest lists of municipalities, TAO and the status and name changes online. Most notably is the fact that there are 320 TAO upgrades to subdistrict municipalities, but in fact 319 of these upgrades were already listed in one file published last December at the same location - only the upgrade of Thung Khli is new. Therefore the at least 161 lost upgrades were obviously really delayed for four year, as by now the new council must have been elected and thus begun their new four year term.

The updated number of different local government units as of September 30 2010 are as following.

• Provincial administrative organizations (PAO): 75
• Municipalities: 2008
  
  • City municipalities: 25
  • Town municipalities: 142
  • Subdistrict municipalities: 1841
• Subdistrict administrative organizations (TAO): 5767
• Special administrative areas: 2

In case anyone wants to work through the files himself, there are the following:

• Number of units countrywide (สรุปข้อมูลจำนวน อปท. ทั่วประเทศ)
• Excel sheet with number of units per province (ข้อมูล อปท. แยกรายจังหวัด)
• Excel sheet with data of all municipalties (ข้อมูลรายชื่อเทศบาล)
• Excel sheet with data of all TAO (ข้อมูลรายชื่อ อบต.)
• Local Government Units changed status in fiscal year 2553 (สรุปการยกฐานะ อปท. ปีงบประมาณ 2553)
• Local Government Units renamed in fiscal year 2553 (สรุปการเปลี่ยนชื่อ อปท. ปีงบประมาณ 2553)
• Local Government Units dissolved in fiscal year 2553 (สรุปการยุบรวม อปท. ปีงบประมาณ 2553)

Day of the local administration

The Thai cabinet, the council of the ministers, is a major place where policies are decided or laws are prepared to send into the parliament. In order to make sure I won't miss any development in the case of the planned province Bueng Kan, I started to monitor the actual cabinet agendas - the English language press usually only covers a subset of the points, even the news outlet of the Public Relations Department only covers part.

So I found this obscure government website collecting the complete cabinet agenda lists since 2000, and thanks to the update scanner plugin I get easily notified on any new agenda list posted there. The ones I guess are the ones most relevant to this blog topic are those by the Interior Ministry, found by the abbreviation "มท." in the second column.

Though there was nothing exciting which went through unnoticed by the English press, one item discussed in the cabinet meeting on June 22 was interesting anyway. Item 49 on that list reads

การขออนุมัติกำหนดให้วันที่ ๑๘ มีนาคม ของทุกปีเป็น วันท้องถิ่นไทย
Ask for permission to make March 18 of every year the Day of Thai Local (Administration)

The name of this new commemorative day วันท้องถิ่นไทย (Wan Thong Thin Thai) includes the word ท้องถิ่น meaning local, also found in the Thai name for the Bangkok district museums (พิพิธภัณฑ์ท้องถิ่นกรุงเทพมหานคร) or the name of the Department of Local Administration (DOLA, กรมส่งเสริมการปกครองท้องถิ่น).

Whereas the cabinet meeting agenda only gives a very short summary on the rationale behind this proposal, an article at the Thai online news site ryt9.com gives the whole story behind it. Thus the reason for choosing March 18 is that on this day in 1906 the very first rural sanitary district (sukhaphiban, สุขาภิบาล) Tha Chalom (ท่าฉลอม) was created, which in turn developed into the city Samut Sakhon. Though this act by king Chulalongkorn was the start of the local administration in Thailand, it only really started when decentralization came into focus in the 1990s.

The proposal was created by the Department of Local Administration in cooperation with the Provincial Administrative Organizations Council, the National Municipal League and the Subdistrict Administrative Organizations League, and submitted to the cabinet on March 2 2010.

March 18 has been a local commemorative day in Samut Sakhon city already, this year in fact the celebrations took place March 17 to 19, and included worship ceremonies, a beauty contents, parade and concerts as well as a exhibition honoring King Chulalongkorn. So lets see if next year on this date will have ceremonies all over the country at the local administrative offices.

New municipality not covered in DOLA statistics

Already in last autumn the constituency boundary definitions announced in the Royal Gazette helped me to find out about newly created municipalities which were not discussed in any of the available board meeting transcripts. However with the list of all changes up to December 15 2009 from the Department of Local Administration (DOLA) I though I am up to date.

But again that was too much to hope, now there was again a constituency definition in the Royal Gazette for a municipality which according to all my previous sources should still be a TAO. It is the subdistrict municipality Bua Sawang (เทศบาลตำบลบัวสว่าง) in Sakon Nakhon province, which was upgraded and renamed from the TAO Sawang (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลสว่าง).

The election of the new municipal council and mayor took place on January 17, so it might be possible that this upgrade did happen after December 15, the cutoff date in the DOLA list. If only DOLA would publish updates to their lists more often, and not just once a year.

DOLA municipality upgrades list, Part 2

As there are now 1841 subdistrict municipalities, compared to 1468 in December 2008, there must have been 373 upgrades, quite a lot but however less than the 460 I have found in the board meeting transcripts. And there are also some from board meetings which haven't been put on the website.

In the current local administrative data there are two files which list the upgrades in last year.

• สรุปการยกฐานะ อปท. ปีงบประมาณ 2552, covering fiscal year 2009 from October 1 2008 to September 30 2009. It includes 1 subdistrict municipality upgraded to a town, and 59 TAO to subdistrict municipalities.
• สรุปการยกฐานะ อปท. ปีงบประมาณ 2553 covers the first three months of fiscal year 2010, from October 1 till December 15. It contains 319 TAO upgrades to subdistrict municipalities.

The most notable thing is the fact that the dates of becoming effective according to these two lists differ from those given in the board meeting, most of them taking place on October 27. A total of 64 upgrades I did not know before from the board meetings, fitting with my earlier assumption. On the other hand, there are about 140 upgrades which are still pending - already decided by the board but for whatever reason delayed.

Already from the case of the upgrade of Ko Samui, which was set to become a city by the board but then actually became only a town, I knew that the board does not have the final word on the municipality upgrades, but it is surprising to see so many changes taking effect on later days than the originally set date. Just sad that these final steps aren't documented on the web, so I only have the annual lists to confirm what I expect from the board meetings.

DOLA municipality upgrades list

On December 15 the Department of Local Administration (DOLA) added the 2009 municipality statistics on their website. I noticed it a few days late since they kept the old page with extension htm and placed the new data on a new page with extension php.

Thus as of December 15 2009, there are the following numbers of local administrative units. [1.doc]

• Provincial administrative organizations (PAO, องค์การบริหารส่วนจังหวัด): 75
• Municipalities (Thesaban, เทศบาล): 2006
  
  • City (Thesaban Nakhon, เทศบาลนคร): 23
  • Town (Thesaban Mueang, เทศบาลเมือง): 142
  • Subdistrict Municipality (Thesaban Tambon, เทศบาลตำบล): 1841
• Subdistrict administrative organization (TAO, องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบล): 5770
• Special administrative units (องค์กรปกครองท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ): 2 (Bangkok and Pattaya)

A total of 7853 units.

The numbers for the subdistrict municipalities and the TAO differ quite a lot from those derived by the board meeting transcripts. I will give a more detailed analysis of these tomorrow by checking through the next two files from the website which list all the municipality upgrades.

DOPA and DOLA

Since I am often referring to the website of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA), I should maybe write about this government structure a bit.

DOPA (กรมการปกครอง) is one of the departments of the Ministry of Interior (MOI, กระทรวงมหาดไทย), and it has its offices located within the compound of the ministry.

Another related department of the Ministry of Interior is the Department of Local Administration (DOLA, กรมส่งเสริมการปกครองท้องถิ่น). In fact this department was split off from DOPA in 1997, when the decentralization to the local administration with municipalities and Tambon administrative organization came into the focus. This office is located near Vimanmek palace. The emblem above is the one of DOLA, but the one of DOPA and the ministry use the same lion as their emblem, but I could not find an equally clean picture on the web.

In the great graphical visualization of the 2009 budget created by Markpeak one can directly see the relative importance between DOPA and DOLA. In fact DOLA has a much larger budget than DOPA, 70% of the budget of MOI goes to DOLA, but only 12.6% to DOPA. Or in numbers (in million Baht)

Department of Local Administration (DOLA)	136,152.3
Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA)	24,705.1
Ministry of Interior (MOI)	195,574.1

View Larger Map

DOLA geocodes - strange cases

When I worked through the DOLA geocodes for the local administrative units (LGUs), there were several cases where the code lists contains outright mistakes, or even more interesting cases where the numbers don't follow the logical system otherwise used. Especially these deviations from the system would be worth some further research, these might point to some interesting things still hidden. But it seems I would only be able to find out more by getting into contact with someone who actually worked on the creation of these numbers.

What follows is the quite lengthy list of all the strange or erroneous cases. To fully get the reasons why these cases are strange better check back the old posting giving the system for the codes.

DOLA geocodes revisited

As I now found the DOLA geocodes in use, I have almost worked through the 7853 codes entering them into my spreadsheet. Though quite a lot of work, crosschecking my list of TAOs with this list helped me to find a few mistakes I made while creating this list from the announcements in the Royal Gazette. It were just about 5 cases, so an error ratio of less than 1 promille isn't bad I think.

Enough self-promotion, much more interesting are the details on these codes which I could find out during this work. When I first discovered them I only did a short look into the system to create the codes, and falsely claimed that for each of the levels the entities are numbered starting with the last two digits 01. This is however only partially true - the municipalities existing before 1999 are always having numbers starting with 01, and the TAO start with 01 as well. Those municipalities which upgraded from sanitary districts in 1999 however have their last two digits following the TAO codes. Also, the TAO upgraded to municipalities also kept their last two digits and only had the leading digit changed from 6 (for TAO) to 5 (for subdistrict municipality) - though a lot of them upgraded in the last years are listed as municipality but still have their code start with 6.

An interesting fact I could deduce from the numbers - these codes were adopted in 2003. I can make this quite exact dating due to the fact that between 2000 and 2004 it had several TAO merged with each other or with a neighboring municipality, but also the last of the Tambon councils getting upgraded into TAO. For those TAO abolished in 2004 it (almost) always had a code left out in the numbering, those TAO created in 2004 are added after the former sanitary districts. On the other hand, those few TAO abolished 2000-2002 have no empty space in the numbers.

To prove it with actual cases

• Wang Kapi (วังกะพี้), Mueang Uttaradit, Uttaradit province - the TAO was merged into the municipality Wang Kapi in 2002, but the codes 6530101 till 5530117 leave final two digit free.
• Khun Yuam (อบต.ขุนยวม), Khun Yuam district, Mae Hong Son province - the TAO was created in 2004, and has the code 6580206. The former sanitary district Khun Yuam has code 5580205.
• Talat Chaiya (ตลาดไชยา), Chaiya district, Surat Thani district - the TAO was merged with the municipality Talat Chaiya in 2004. The codes for the district omit the number 03, so I presume that this TAO had the code 6840603.

I have also come across several cases where it has some strange codes, like omitted codes despite there are no abolished entities. I'll write up a list of these as well and post it later.

DOLA local administrative entities database

Some months ago I discovered a Excel sheet with numeric codes for the local government units - PAO, TAO and municipalities (thesaban). I did not discover the reason for creating these codes or any uses of them back then.

Now while I was added several weblinks into the XML, mostly for TAO websites, I noticed a strange link on the website of Don Kha (ตำบลดอนคา), pointing to the website of the Department of Local Administration (DOLA). The numeric code in the URL made me curious and I faintly remembered that Excel sheet.

And - it turned out this link pointed directly into a database of the local government units, and the numeric code is used to identify the correct entry. Out of the many items which are stored in the database, those which are most interesting to my needs are on the first page, i.e. the URL of the website, the postal address, the name and end of term of the chairman (or mayor), area and population. The other pages are on infrastructure, economy, temples and schools, public health, disaster prevention, environment and taxation.

Just sad that apparently the webpage is the only way to access the data, getting the data directly in XML form would be perfect to do more processing. I'm tempted to write a parser to convert the HTML into such a XML myself and then being able to leech all the data, but right now I am way to busy with other things.

Now I know that these codes are actually used I have started to add them into my spreadsheet (by the way, for those not able to open the OpenOffice file, there's also a less-frequenty updated Excel version), and will write up more a more detailed analysis of these codes once finished.

DOLA magazine

The Department of Local Administration (DOLA) has its own monthly magazine named ท้องถิ่นไทย meaning something like "Local Thai". Unlike the similar magazine from DOPA, at least parts of the magazine are downloadable as PDF from the DOLA website.

Though I cannot read much, at least I can recognize some topics by looking at these PDF. So the latest issue online from January 2009 (but mistitled as มกราคม 2551 on the website) includes a report on the city administration of Munich, including a portrait of the mayor Christian Ude (คริสเตียน อูเด). Munich is referred to as เทศบาลนครมิวนิค, and in a later photo one can see the giant ballot papers due to the complicated voting procedures including cumulative voting.

It seems each issue has around 100 pages. The magazine is now in its 5th year, it was started in December 2004. According to the order form it costs 700 Baht per year, and probably not found in the normal bookstores like the normal for-profit magazines.