Baden-Baden threatens to assume money for salaries. In Stuttgart, trade tax breaks by 200 million euros. And in Tübingen, the regional council refuses the approval of the budget. Nine out of ten municipalities in Baden-Württemberg are no longer able to contest their ongoing expenses with income. Nationwide, the municipal deficit has quadrupled in just one year and reached the shocking value of 24 billion euros.
“We drive the municipalities against the wall with force”
What happened there? Because this crash has been carried out in thousands of municipalities at the same time, the individual treasurer cannot be to blame. The main cause is increasing costs in social households, especially for disabled help, youth welfare, refugee care and hospitals. In addition, there are far excessive tariff offices in the public service and now also tax returns. As a result, we drive the municipalities financially against the wall with full force. The piery vulture circles over many town halls.
Tübingen’s OB Boris Palmer writes: “The federal government must finally end the state guns.” (Photo: DPA/Marijan Murat)
Citizens experience it up close
This is more than an accounting problem. In the municipalities, people experience the state directly and personally. If the theater or the indoor pool closes, the bridge disintegrates, the bus line is eliminated and the street becomes the pothole slope, so the confidence in the state, democracy and the so -called parties in the middle.
It is no coincidence that Kaiserslautern is also the largest city in Germany that no longer operates a public indoor pool and is the highest proportion of AfD voters from all West German cities.
So what to do? We have to contribute to the solution. This includes staffing, performance restrictions and digitization of the administration. There is also no way around the unpopular increase in municipal taxes. We will experience this on a broad front in the coming year. But it won’t work without the help of the federal and state governments.
Whoever ordered has to pay too
The federal government must finally end the state guns. What he cannot pay for himself, as is currently the legal claim to an all -day care place at school, is also not allowed to promise. The principle of connexuality from the state law “Whoever ordered” must also be binding for the federal government.
If the federal government does not have the money either, it has to decide on performance laws itself. We can save tens of billions to the economy and administration if the federal and state governments abolish regulations and laws that only cost us time, money and nerves, but do nothing. There are tens of thousands of them. We no longer have the money and staff to manage this regulatory rage.
We citizens have to be ready to work more and longer again. “
Boris Palmer
The billions from the federal infrastructure assets are just an apparently huge amount. 500 million euros remain for the municipalities in Baden-Württemberg over twelve years and 16 countries-this can only prevent ongoing projects. The money must therefore flow directly and without support applications and bureaucratic procedures as an investment flat rate in the municipal financial equalization.
Because we cannot cope with further tax failures, the country has to use the new scope of the debt brake in order to guarantee us at least stable income from the shared tax pot. In the end, however, it is clear: if we do not get the economy up and running again, we are facing a dramatic decline in infrastructure in cities and municipalities. That must be the top task of politics. And we citizens have to be ready to work more and longer again.
We regularly publish guest contributions from publicists and public life people who are not editorial members. These contributions depict a wide range of opinions and each only reflect the point of view of their authors.
