County Administrator Urges State to Make Required Advance Payments on Time
Particularly with regard to transfer expenditures, additional costs of approximately 16.2 million euros are currently expected, primarily due to back payments for previous years. Furthermore, for the year 2026, the district has so far received only advance payments of approximately 7.5 million euros from the state—while the budget had projected revenues of 25 million euros. This initially results in a funding shortfall of approximately 12.5 million euros. These amounts are not expected to be offset until in the coming years.
“The cities and counties can no longer make advance payments of this magnitude on behalf of the state. Given the current state of municipal budgets, this is no longer feasible. I urge the state to make these advance payments on time in the future, as agreed in 2019 with the Association of Counties and the Association of Cities,” said District Administrator Dietmar Allgaier.
Actual shortfall in the social services budget: 3.5 million euros
Christos Vavouras, head of the Social Affairs Department, emphasized that the variances in the social budget were largely due to timing differences in reimbursements from the state and in payments for previous years. The actual shortfall compared to the budgeted amount is only about 3.5 million euros. This is primarily due to higher-than-expected cost increases, such as those resulting from collective bargaining agreements, rising operating costs, and contractually agreed-upon cost adjustments.
Net income declines by 23.8 million euros
Bettina Beck, head of the finance department, also explained the current state of the district budget. According to her, the district must expect total revenue to be 2.4 million euros lower. At the same time, expenditures are rising by 21.4 million euros. Overall, this results in a deterioration of the result by 23.8 million euros.
As a result, the deficit is growing from the originally planned 16.5 million euros to an estimated 40.2 million euros. The district’s liquidity is also coming under greater pressure than expected. Instead of the calculated cash surplus of 3.1 million euros in the operating budget, a cash requirement of 20.7 million euros is now projected. Added to this is a 5.3 million euro increase in financing requirements for investments.
Since the borrowing authorization for 2026 is not to be utilized in accordance with the district council resolution of July 17, 2026, an additional financing requirement of 4.3 million euros arises from financing activities. Overall, the financial budget thus deteriorates by 39.7 million euros. According to current projections, the district’s cash reserves will decrease by 68.3 million euros.
