Head of Finance Koppe welcomes decision on the state budget, but dampens expectations

Head of Finance Koppe welcomes state budget resolution, but dampens expectations

Following the recent adoption of the 2022 state budget by the Thuringian state parliament, there is good news and bad news for Jena's municipal budget for Head of Finance Benjamin Koppe:

"In view of the pressure on municipal budgets, particularly due to the ongoing corona pandemic, additional state funding from the €130 million municipal pact is expressly welcome. This means that Jena will receive around € 2.75 million more than in the previous year from the key allocations for municipal and district tasks and - depending on how you look at it - € 5.19 million more than the original budget estimate for 2022," says Koppe.

However, the additional revenue is not freely available, but is already being used as part of the budget for 2021 and 2022, which has been approved by the city council and conditionally approved by the state administration office.

"That's the bad news. You can only spend every euro once. Although our municipal budget deficit of €11.32 million reported this year will be reduced to €6.13 million, additional expenditure that is not necessary cannot be financed with the additional state funds under budgetary law,"

states Benjamin Koppe.In the course of the discussion for a new city budget, which will begin in late summer, it is essential that the gap between income and expenditure does not widen further. According to Koppe, it must also be possible in this context to prioritize investments, be more robustly prepared for events such as a pandemic and, above all, focus even more strongly on the issue of climate protection.

However, the head of the finance department still has an aftertaste for the adopted state budget:

"The failure to reform the municipal financial equalization system (KFA) in Thuringia has hit us as the city of Jena particularly hard. The legal amendment, which the state parliament initiated at the end of the year together with the budget, will relieve us as a city by €2 million per year from now on, but according to an expert opinion commissioned by the state government, we would be entitled to considerably more. This is a real downer. According to calculations by the Financial Research Institute at the University of Cologne (FiFo Köln), the smallest and largest municipalities in the Free State have been structurally underfunded for years. A needs-based financing and a fundamental amendment of the KFA are therefore still a long way off," concludes Koppe.