The author concerns the problems of the local government reformation, as well as the nature of the work of municipal authorities in the industrial cities of the Angara area in the late XXth century. As a result of the process of self-government systems establishing, urban communities acquired sufficient experience of self-organization both within urban spaces and at the level of inter-municipal cooperation. Achievements and failures of the reforms of the 1990s predetermined the most important tendencies in the current modern municipal policy.