By Beverly A. Schlotterbeck
editor
(Publisher's Note: In conjunction with NACo's ongoing relations with the German Association of Counties, the Deutscher Landkreistag (DLT), County News Editor Beverly A. Schlotterbeck was selected to participate in a staff exchange with the DLT in mid-September. Following is the second of two reports on her experiences and observations.)
in photo at right: The stage is set
for the final general session of the 1996 Annual meeting of the Deutscher
Landkreistag (German Association of Counties). This year's theme-"Counties
in the 21st Century: Challenges and Perspectives."
In the lobby of the Rems-Murr Kreishaus, or county office building, about a 40-minute drive from Stuttgart in southern Germany, sits a touch screen kiosk. Like an American counterpart, the kiosk has information aplenty about the county, ready at the touch of a screen: telephone numbers, staff names, county offices and divisions, hours of operation, historical highlights, tourist attractions, digitized photos of key leaders and personnel. If it weren't for the sounds of another language echoing in the large room, this could be the lobby of many a county office building in the states.
And the similarity doesn't stop there. At meetings on the federal, state and even, European community level, county officials campaign about budgets hard-pressed to keep up with citizen expectations ... unwelcome federal policies and shrinking resources. A cabinet-level minister, during a speech before delegates to the German Association of Counties annual meeting, warns them not to expect the customary level of support - the federal budget has problems of its own.
Roland Klinger, social service lobbyist for the Landkreistag of Baden-Wurttemberg (BV), one of 13 German state associations of counties, says social service costs are the fastest growing and most expensive portion of the county (kreis) budget, about 2530 percent. In the case of Baden-Wurttemberg, these costs are being driven by two factors: refugees from the Bosnian conflict and the state's share of unemployed Germans. (Overall, the national rate of unemployment is 10 percent.)
What's true for the state of BV is fairly typical as well for the country. The German Association of Counties, the Deutscher Landkreistag (DLT), sets expenditures for social services in all of Germany's 323 counties at 2530 percent, as well. During the past five years, most of that has gone to support the unemployed, under an elaborate social insurance policy that has counties picking up support for the long-term unemployed. In 1995, the cost to them was 50 billion deutsche marks, or approximately $33.5 billion.
If any of this is sounding familiar, it may be because German counties, like American counties, provide the nation's safety net ... and then some. Approximately 95 percent of a kreis' responsibilities are mandated by federal or state law, and include everything from health care to environmental protection, to waste management, to vocational education, to public transportation.
But while the responsibilities and the problems may seem the same, the political and financial structures underlying German counties are very different.
For starters, a landrat is a landrat is a landrat (or county executive) no matter where you travel in Germany. He or she is not a supervisor in Virginia, or a commissioner in Pennsylvania, or a police juror in Louisiana or a judge in Texas. He or she is a landrat, period. The title remains the same, be it the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, or Schleswig-Holstein, or Brandenburg or Sachsen.
Until recently, he or she was elected by the county assembly, or kreistag - a legislative body ranging from 40100 members, depending on the size of the county. And he was elected to eight-year terms. (Practically speaking, the power of incumbency takes on a much larger meaning after eight years. Most county executives I met had been in office for 12, 16, 20 years.)
The landrat represents political interests, while the county's chief administrative officer, or oberkreisdirektor, represents the legal side of county government. He, too, is elected by the kreistag, or at least has been. Many states are adopting the Bavarian practice of directly electing both landrats and oberkreisdirektors.
Fritzhof Kuhn is the chief administrative officer (oberkreisdirektor) for Rhein-Sieg Kreis, Germany's second largest county, founded in 1969 as an amalgamation of two counties that surround Bonn, the former West German capital. He has been director for five years. In 1999, however, he will face direct election by the voters in Rhein-Sieg County. A change, which he readily admits, is a bit unsettling.
As administrative director, Kuhn is also the county's top law enforcement officer, since he is charged by the state's constitution with administering regulations. There are no regulatory agencies at the German federal level, no EPAs or FCCs or FTCs. All federal law is administered through the states, with counties legally responsible for supervising about 80 percent of it.
Supervisor, however, does not mean enforcement powers. The oberkreisdirektor can only notify a town or city that it is not following a law, not require it to comply. That's because municipalities or "communities" in Germany, are, by and large, independent entities. (Three of them, in fact, are so independent, they're states Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen but that's a very long story.)
And the German constitution underscores that independence by requiring the national government to direct 15 percent of its income tax revenues to local communities. Herein lies another tale of contrast.
Unlike the states, the distribution of tax funds at all levels is generally set by law. Only the federal government has the power to tax income. By constitutional law, those receipts are divided, 42.5 percent for the federal government; 42.5 percent for the states (lander) and 15 percent for local communities.
Something of the same process is at work for the national sales tax: currently 55 percent goes to the federal government; the remainder goes to the states. Other revenues are similarly distributed. The fuel tax goes to the federal government; business enterprise taxes go to the communities.
The national sales tax distribution formula seems to be the only revenue source up for grabs. Every two to four years, the states and national government check their numbers against actual expenditures to determine whether there needs to be a shift in the formula. However, expenditures, not politics, determines the outcome, says Englebert Recker, the DLT's tax and revenue lobbyist.
So if you, as a state, can make the case that your bills for housing Bosnian refugees or political asylees are busting the bank, then maybe the distribution formula will change.
If you noticed no mention of county government in this discussion, you're on to something. German counties have no direct taxing authority. None, zilch, kein , except for fees they set for hunting licenses. Hitler stripped the kreis of taxing authority in 1936. It is the municipality or so-called "community" that taxes land, property or businesses, plus receives direct funding from the federal government.
Kreis revenues, on the other hand, come from the state (about one-third) and from the municipalities within their borders. The latter revenue source is something of a sticky business. While municipalities receive direct federal funding, some, in the case of small villages and towns, turn their portion over to the kreis to perform services not economically feasible at the village level.
But in the case of cities, the kreise has the authority to tax them, anywhere from 3040 percent of the amount they receive from the federal government. This doesn't always make for happy relations between the two.
This tension and the extensive responsibilities kreis shoulder in administering
and executing federal law is prompting the German Association of Counties
to seek direct funding for the kreis. When asked about its chances, a DLT
staffer shrugged his shoulders and suggested it would not be soon.