The Network of Connections in a Bolesławiec Association. Who Pays for the President’s Trips Abroad?

The Association of Ceramic Communes of the Republic of Poland was established at the end of 2015. It was an initiative of the mayor of Bolesławiec Piotr Roman and two former commune heads: Roberta Relicha and Andrzeja Dutkowskiego. The following communes joined the association: the urban commune of Bolesławiec, the rural commune of Bolesławiec, Nowogrodziec, Osiecznica, Warta Bolesławiecka (since 2017), and Jaworzyna Śląska. The association is headquartered in Bolesławiec, in the town hall—that is, the City Office—at Rynek 41.

The Osiecznica Commune resigned from the association after five years. The Nowogrodziec Commune had a break in its membership from 2020 to 2023. The Jaworzyna Commune paid its dues through 2025, although it concluded that membership in the association was no longer justified because a company from its area had gone bankrupt (Zakład Porcelany Stołowej Karolina).

Who Is in Charge of Whom Here?

The association’s president became Krzysztof Hewak, who is also the Bolesławiec mayor’s plenipotentiary for foreign relations and investor services. Hewak’s deputy is Andrzej Janiec, head of the rural Bolesławiec Commune. The association’s founding committee includes Piotr Roman, Hewak’s direct superior.

The supervisory body includes more officials: Laura Zelig (a junior inspector for promotion and public relations in the rural Bolesławiec Commune, managed by Andrzej Janiec) and Mikołaj Weigt (head of the Bolesławiec City Development and Promotion Department).

Members of the supervisory body are required to oversee the association’s activities in terms of economy, reliability, legality, and purpose. They review reports on the management board’s activities and motions concerning the distribution of profit or coverage of losses. They submit to the general meeting of members a motion to grant or refuse discharge to the management board. If abuses are identified, they are required to secure the relevant documents and notify the president.

Mikołaj Weight and Laura Zelig must therefore supervise the activities of the president in the association, even though he is Weight’s colleague at work. They must also monitor the activities of the president’s deputy, the commune head, who is Zelig’s superior on a daily basis.

Where Does the Money Come From?

The communes belonging to the association pay dues. They are not excessive. The largest amount comes from the budget of the city of Bolesławiec. Since 2016, the total dues have amounted to nearly PLN 90,000. The rural commune and the Nowogrodziec Commune pay an average of PLN 3,600 annually, while the Warta Bolesławiecka Commune pays an average of PLN 2,000 annually.

Over 10 years of activity, the association has accumulated nearly PLN 200,000. “A total of PLN 66,441.89 was spent on statutory expenses in 2016–2024,” the president, Krzysztof Hewak, informed us.

Public money is therefore transferred to the association and later spent by official-presidents, among other things, on organizing exhibitions for private ceramic companies. The officials nevertheless want to avoid saying that the communes finance the trips and exhibitions with public money, and instead present the association as doing so with “its own” funds.

“The Urban Commune of Bolesławiec, like the other association members, pays only a general membership fee,” wrote Mikołaj Weigt, who supervises the association’s activities. “These funds are allocated to the association’s statutory activities as a whole and are not assigned to specific projects. The association’s bodies independently decide how the funds are spent, in accordance with its statutes and the principle of the entity’s separate legal and financial status. Therefore, membership in the association and payment of the membership fee must be clearly distinguished from directly financing a specific event from the commune’s budget,” added the member of the audit committee when we asked who had financed the recently organized exhibition in France.

The issue of the city not “financing” events organized by the association is also very important to the mayor of Bolesławiec. “I repeat: the project is financed not from the city budget, but from the association’s budget,” Piotr Roman emphatically stressed during a session in October, referring to the exhibition in France. However, he did not tell the councillors that the city and other communes had previously paid dues to the association.

Whose Money Pays for the Official’s Trips Abroad?

The City Office did not answer the question of how the official-president Krzysztof Hewak’s trips are financed. We asked a simple question: when official Hewak travels to events organized by his association, does he receive allowances from the City Office, or does he finance the trips from the association’s fund?

“President Krzysztof Hewak was present at exhibitions in Italy: Vietri sul Mare, Rome, and Faenza, and participated in organizing them,” replied Agnieszka Gergont, spokesperson for the mayor and the City Office. “During the 2022 and 2024 exhibitions, he also represented the city of Bolesławiec at the General Meetings of the European Route of Ceramics Association,” the spokesperson added, without answering the question about the source of funding for the official-president’s trip.

The most recent event was a ceramics exhibition in France, in the partner city of Nogent-Sur-Marne. It was co-financed from the budget of the Museum of Ceramics in the amount of PLN 2,223.52, not counting the museum staff’s work on site arranging the exhibition.

“In connection with organizing the exhibition in Nogent-sur-Marne, the costs incurred by the association amounted to just under PLN 19,000. The expenses covered transport, translations, and the costs of delegating employees, totaling PLN 18,818.95,” Krzysztof Hewak informed us.

The purpose behind establishing the Association of Ceramic Communes of the Republic of Poland is clear: promoting Bolesławiec ceramics. The list of events attributed to the association is extensively described and available on the websites of the Bolesławiec City Office and the Museum of Ceramics. However, the organization’s membership and the professional relationships between its members and management board no longer seem so clear or conducive to transparent operations.