Poor coffers

Slimming down at the Fons

The Social Fund 2023 swallowed up a whopping 324.5 million euros. Most of the money - namely 198 million euros - was needed in the area of senior citizens and care provision.(Bild: ANDREAS TROESTER)

More and more municipalities in Vorarlberg can only manage their expenditure by using up their reserves - if they have any. Andrea Kaufmann, head of the municipal association, identifies an urgent need for action and points out potential savings.

Preparing the 2025 budget in Dornbirn was anything but easy - even though the trade fair city is one of the wealthier municipalities in the state. "As early as 2024, 50 percent of Vorarlberg's municipalities had to finance current expenditure through loans. A third of the municipalities no longer have any reserves," reports Dornbirn's mayor, who is also the head of the municipal association. In addition to falling revenue shares - the municipalities receive less money from the federal government - the mayors are particularly concerned about the rising contributions to the social and health funds.

Emergency brake pulled on the social fund in the fall
"In previous years, we had negotiated a cap on the social fund with the state. The contributions were not allowed to rise higher than the average increase in revenue shares over the last five years," explains Kaufmann. However, the pandemic and exploding personnel costs had recently led to a "complete derailment" "In the fall, we pulled the emergency brake and cut the social fund evenly across all areas by around 14 million euros." At the same time, it was decided to start a structural process together with the major providers. "We agreed with Martina Rüscher, State Councillor for Social Affairs, who is now head of the Social Fund, to tackle this process quickly."

Do we need a new distribution of tasks?
In addition to improving efficiency and eliminating duplication, the president of the association of municipalities also advocates a general rethink of which tasks are the responsibility of the municipalities and which should be handled by the state. A change in the key - currently the state bears 60 percent of the costs, the municipalities 40 percent - would be welcome, but would only give the municipalities a brief respite. Basically, it is also not the time to demand money from the state and federal government. "The federal government's financial situation doesn't look good, the state's a little better," says Kaufmann. Optimizing structures and saving money is therefore the order of the day. And that applies to both the social fund and the health fund.