As of: January 30, 2024, 6:00 a.m
By: Sebastian Tauchnitz
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The district is scraping everything together this year to save the Weilheim-Schongau GmbH hospital from bankruptcy.
© Achim Duwentäster/IMAGO
The budget deliberations in the district council will certainly not be an event subject to entertainment tax this year.
Immense sums of money are flowing into the hospital GmbH, the district levy is set to increase and there is almost no money left for district roads.
District
– In February, the committees and parliamentary groups will discuss the budget for the current year, and the district council will then make a final decision in March.
The past few months have shown how fickle the committee now makes decisions on financial issues.
In September, a clear majority decided to avoid insolvency of the Weilheim-Schongau GmbH hospital by guaranteeing that the district would compensate for its losses until the restructuring was completed.
The immense amounts of millions involved were clearly stated.
Just a few weeks later, when the topic was discussed again in the district council, the majority of the committee voted against the new key parameters paper, which actually only took the hospital decisions into account.
In the meantime, it had become clear to many district councilors how serious the hospital decision actually was.
This is also reflected in the current year's budget.
The district levy
Already in the debate about the supplementary budget for 2023 it became clear that the district levy - at 54 percent, the highest in all of Bavaria - will continue to rise.
The administration made it clear that 56 percent would be necessary for the district to carry out its tasks properly.
In particular, the numerous CSU mayors in the district council took to the barricades.
In the end, District Administrator Andrea Jochner-Weiß determined that a district levy of 55 percent should be expected.
In order for this to work at all, all accounting stops are pulled out.
The Hospital GmbH transfers an amount of around two million euros, which should actually remain with the company, back to the district.
He can record that as income.
Two million euros corresponds to around one percentage point of the district levy.
In return, the district takes on two million euros more in new debt in order to transfer the money back to the hospital GmbH.
To put it very simply, the district takes on debt in order to be able to pay interest and repayments and therefore not place an even greater burden on the communities.
The hospital
The Weilheim-Schongau GmbH hospital is primarily responsible for the financial situation.
This year, a total of around 27 million euros will be made available to the company.
Of this, three million euros are for urgently needed investments, twelve million euros are for the company's ongoing losses, which the district is covering.
And another twelve million euros for the so-called “transformation costs”.
As was made clear in September, behind this lies the social plan from which the severance payments for the employees that the GmbH laid off at the end of the year were to be paid.
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The sum of twelve million euros was calculated on the basis that 290 employees had to be compensated.
However, as managing director Thomas Lippmann reported at the beginning of the year, so many employees had now resigned that only around 200 employees had to be laid off.
So a third less severance payments that have to be paid.
In purely mathematical terms, this means that of the planned twelve million euros, only eight million would be needed for the social plan.
The local newspaper asked district treasurer Norbert Merk whether the amount would be adjusted.
He declined to comment, citing the fact that no draft has yet been submitted publicly.
Social plan on credit: government turns a blind eye
The costs of the social plan are completely financed by loans.
The government of Upper Bavaria is turning a blind eye to this, because the district is actually only allowed to go into debt for specific investments - construction work or procurement.
Those responsible are therefore declaring the severance pay for the hospital GmbH employees who had to leave as a “structural-organizational investment measure”.
It is unclear how the government would react if the money that the district borrowed from the banks for the social plan was ultimately used for other purposes at the hospital GmbH.
Those responsible are preparing for this eventuality by never talking about “social plan costs” but rather about “transformation costs”.
In any case, there is growing dissatisfaction in parts of the district council about the hospital GmbH's financial needs.
The Weilheim-Schongau district will be in debt of around 100 million euros at the end of 2024.
There is currently a dispute in the neighboring district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen because the district is in the black for 30 million euros.
In Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen it is assumed that the district's debts will amount to around 33.5 million euros at the end of the year.
In view of the immense debt burden, which will make investments difficult for years to come, resourceful district councilors simply compared the subsidies for the hospital GmbH with the new debt in previous years.
And we discovered that the values are almost the same.
The - of course very simplistic - conclusion: Without the permanent subsidies for the hospitals, the district would not have to take on debt to carry out its tasks.
The investments
However, the exact opposite is currently the case.
There are hardly any new investments in the 2024 budget.
The construction of the double gymnasium at the Weilheim high school is to begin, as are the plans for the expansion of the secondary school in Peißenberg, and the cycle path through Hohenpeißenberg is to be built from next year.
To achieve this, the maintenance of the district roads will be radically cut: half a million euros will be allocated to this in the new budget, but 100,000 euros of this will be diverted for cycle paths.
Almost nothing is invested in the energy-efficient renovation of the district office's properties - the investment requirement here is around 100 million euros.