From China Youth Daily and Red Net via Boxun Net (link):

Jiang Shilin, an elected chief of the Yetang Village of Yintian Township, Changning City in Hunan Province since 1999, sued his city’s finance department on April 3 for purchasing two luxurious, illegitimate cars out of budget. The lawsuit triggered a lot of comments and attention in the media and over the Internet.

The Changning People’s Court, however, told Jiang and his lawyer a few days later that they would not merit the case. The same day, Zhou Niangui, chief of the finance department, visited Jiang and admitted that there was a problem of stretched budgeting for government cars and expenses.

Strangely, media reports came out later saying that Jiang shook the hands of Zhou and said that he wasn’t familiar with budgeting and didn’t collect enough evidence before filing his suit. Jiang was outraged.

Elected seven years ago as the chief of his village of Yetang, Jiang became the first elected village governor since the village’s general election, winning 404 votes of nearly 500 villagers. Since taking the office, he didn’t get a penny of salary but pressed ahead with tax relief and other villager-favored policies. But township government got angry and unilaterally stripped him of his governorship.

Outspoken and courageous, Jiang sued the township government and got his office back.

Luo Qiulin, Jiang’s lawyer in both his lawsuit against the township and now with the city finance department, said Jiang should be able to win the case against the finance department, but cautioned that sometimes things do not depend on the game of the law.

“Our budgeting, budget supervision, and people’s congress monitoring systems are dysfunctional,” Luo said. “It even relies on an average tax payer to seek supervision through public litigation.”

Jiang complained about the fancy villas many finance department officials now live in, in huge contrast with their shabby office building right in front of their homes. He then discovered through studying local people’s congress documents that the department’s two newly purchased cars were not included in their budget proposals. Jiang wrote a petition letter to the finance department seeking an explanation about extra-budgetary car purchases, but heard nothing from the officials.

Zhou, the finance department chief, got famous soon after Jiang’s filing of the lawsuit. “If everybody files a lawsuit, wouldn’t it bring too much trouble to the car purchasing danweis (government agencies)?” he once answered to Jiang in public. “Now the agricultural tax is phased out, is he a taxpayer now? Is his tax enough to buy a car, or pay the salaries?”