District Commission
The Bezirkshauptmannschaft (often abbreviated to BH ) is a state authority in Austria that performs the tasks of the district administrative authority outside the statutory cities . Your district is called the political district , but in Lower Austria and Vorarlberg it is called the administrative district . Only in Vienna are there no district authorities.
The district authority is headed by the district captain , a state employee. Due to the organization of the district authority as a monocratic authority, the district captain himself is responsible for all the tasks of the district administration, which he can then delegate to the other employees. The authority is the district administration itself. The term district administration may be used for female officials .
Position of the district authorities
In federal matters (indirect federal administration) , the district authorities have to comply with instructions from the governor or the regional council commissioned by him, in state affairs instructions from the state government as a collegial body. In federal matters, the governor or the regional council is subject to the right of the responsible federal minister to give instructions.
The respective federal state has to determine which municipalities belong to a particular political district. Every municipality that has not been declared a city with its own statute by state law belongs to a political district.
The district authority is headed as a state authority by a civil servant district captain or district captain appointed by the state government . The other employees are also state officials or employees.
As of 2017 there were 79 district authorities in Austria. These are responsible as district administrative authorities for around 98 percent of the Austrian territory with around two thirds of the population.
tasks
Although the state authority, the district administration fulfills tasks of both the indirect federal administration and the state administration. A wide variety of specialist areas are located here:
- Medical officer
- Official veterinarian
- Commercial , water , (road) traffic law
- Social welfare office
- Security police
- Aliens Police
- Forestry and hunting and fishing administration
- Community supervision
- Administrative criminal matters
Issue and renewal of the following documents:
- Residence permits for third-country nationals
- Identity card
- Driving license
- Identity card
- passport
- weapons law documents
Outside the local area of activity of the state police headquarters as security authorities of the first instance (there is currently one for the municipality of Leoben in the Leoben district and for the municipality of Schwechat including the airport in the Bruck an der Leitha district ), the security administration is the responsibility of the district authorities. The district police commanders and their police departments of the federal police guard are subordinate to them in the procurement of the security administration. For the district administrative authority, the organs of the public security service subordinate to them or assigned to them provide the executive service.
The district administration is not responsible for the judiciary. Therefore, the judicial districts do not always correspond to the political districts.
Political expositions, branch offices and administrative communities
In some districts there were so-called Political Exposituren as a branch (branch office) of a district administration, to which all responsibilities of the district administration are transferred for their district. Since 2013 there is only one more in the Styrian district of Liezen : the Political Expositur Gröbming . A political branch oversees part of the district. The political branch is headed by a branch manager. It is not an independent authority.
In some districts there are also branch offices that are to be regarded as branches. Often only the most important tasks such as issuing passports and driving licenses are performed there.
Furthermore, since 2016 there has been an administrative community for the first time between the district authorities for the districts of Eferding and Grieskirchen in Upper Austria, which is headed by a joint district captain. These are still two separate authorities that are only linked by personal union.
history
District authorities were established in the Austrian Empire from 1849 in all crown lands in order to be able to combine the autonomously established local communities of an area into the next largest administrative unit. (The next higher authority over the district authorities was the kk governor in matters of the state , and the state committee in matters of the state .) In 1854 there was talk of mixed district offices in which administration and justice were not yet separated.
In their current form they go back to the Cisleithan constitution of old Austria of 1867 , on the basis of which they were regulated by law in 1868. Sections 10 and 11 of the law stipulate that each country should be divided into political districts, headed by district captains appointed by the interior minister.
After the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, district authorities were retained in the Republic of Austria and Czechoslovakia . In 1918/19, Karl Renner considered including democratically elected district heads and parliaments in the republican constitution of Austria, but did not succeed in doing so. (Only in the federal state of Vienna have there been elected district heads and district councils since 1920 who have municipal political, but no official authority.)
In the Transitional Act 1920, a constitutional law that was re-announced with the announcement of the Federal Chancellor on September 26, 1925, the district authorities were still declared to exist, since the relevant legal regulations did not conflict with the Federal Constitution adopted in 1920. Since 1925 they have been constitutionally defined as state authorities, but they also have to perform tasks of indirect federal administration. The dismissal of a district authority by the state requires the approval of the federal government with regard to its tasks in federal affairs in accordance with Article 15, Paragraph 10 of the Federal Constitutional Act.
In contrast to Germany , there were no territorial reforms ( district reform ) with the amalgamation of districts in Austria until 2011 . In 2011, the province of Styria , which is struggling with major budget problems, began to merge neighboring districts or district authorities for cost reasons.
District authorities released
The following district authorities have so far been abandoned and not re-established:
- 1891
- 1905 Floridsdorf (until 1896 BH Groß-Enzersdorf ; from 1897 Floridsdorf because of incorporation to Vienna; 1905 continued as Floridsdorf area)
- 1938
- Gröbming (later political branch )
- Pöggstall (1899; dissolved 1938; attached to Melk in 1940)
- Hietzing area and Floridsdorf area (both due to incorporation into NS- Greater Vienna )
- 2012 Judenburg and Knittelfeld (merging to form the new Murtal district with headquarters in Judenburg)
- 2013
- Mürzzuschlag and Bruck an der Mur (merging to form the new Bruck-Mürzzuschlag district based in Bruck an der Mur )
- Fürstenfeld and Hartberg (merging to form the new Hartberg-Fürstenfeld district with headquarters in Hartberg )
- Radkersburg and Feldbach (merging to form the new district of Southeast Styria with two main buildings in Feldbach and Bad Radkersburg )
- 2016 Vienna area (dissolved at the end of 2016; the municipalities were divided among the adjacent districts)
Newly established district authorities
District authorities newly established since 1868 (in today's Austria, no longer existing are in italics):
- 1873 Gröbming for the district of Gröbming
- 1890 Währing for the district of Währing
- 1890 Hietzing for the district of Hietzing
- 1891 Voitsberg for the Voitsberg district
- 1892 Tulln for the Tulln district
- 1892 Hietzing-Umgebung for the district Hietzing-Umgebung
- 1896 Melk for the Melk district
- 1896 Hallein for the Hallein district
- 1897 Mödling for the Mödling district (dissolved in 1938; operations resumed in 1954)
- 1899 Gmünd for the district of Gmünd (1922 reduction through the State Treaty of St. Germain )
- 1899 Pöggstall for the Pöggstall district
- 1901 Gänserndorf for the Gänserndorf district
- 1903 Mürzzuschlag for the Mürzzuschlag district
- 1903 Urfahr for the Urfahr district ( renamed the Urfahr area in 1919 after the incorporation of Urfahr to Linz )
- 1906 Floridsdorf-Umgebung for the Floridsdorf-Umgebung district
- 1907 Eferding for the Eferding district
- 1911 Grieskirchen for the Grieskirchen district
- In 1921, six Burgenland district authorities and two statutory cities emerged from the Hungarian municipal higher chair judges' offices (chair districts) . In Jennersdorf , the district of Jennersdorf was formed from the western part of the St. Gotthard district .
- 1938 Fürstenfeld for the Fürstenfeld district
- 1946 Knittelfeld for the Knittelfeld district
- 1953 Lilienfeld for the district of Lilienfeld (1868; dissolved 1890; activity resumed in 1897; 1933 as branch office of St. Pölten; 1938 activity again as district office; 1945 as branch office of St. Pölten)
- 1954 District Vienna-Umgebung (after the spin-off of the area from Greater Vienna , last seat Klosterneuburg )
- 1969 Dornbirn for the Dornbirn district
- 1982 Feldkirchen in Carinthia for the Feldkirchen district
- 2012 Murtal for the Murtal district based in Judenburg
- 2013 Bruck-Mürzzuschlag for the Bruck-Mürzzuschlag district based in Bruck an der Mur
- 2013 Hartberg-Fürstenfeld for the Hartberg-Fürstenfeld district based in Hartberg
- 2013 Südoststeiermark for the district of Südoststeiermark based in Feldbach
literature
- Kurt Hürbe: The district administration in Lower Austria. Competencies, functions, working methods . First edition. Scientific publication series Lower Austria, Volume 3/4, ZDB -ID 527774-7 . Verlag Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus, St. Pölten / Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-85326-503-0 .
- Karl Gutkas , Josef Demmelbauer: The district administration yesterday and today. NÖ-Schriften, Volume 74, ZDB -ID 1056796-3 . Office of the Lower Austrian Provincial Government, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-85006-065-9 .
See also
Web links
- Entry on District Authority in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
- History of the district administration
Individual evidence
- ↑ Legal statement to the finding Ra 2016/17/0214 , Administrative Court
- ↑ RGBl. 295/1849. Imperial resolution, whereby the basic lines for the organization of the political administrative authorities are approved. In: General Reich Law and Government Gazette for the Austrian Empire , year 1849, pp. 459–469. (Online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ RGBl. 44/1868. Law of 19 May 1868 on the establishment of political administrative authorities (…). In: Reichs-Gesetz-Blatt für das Kaiserthum Österreich , year 1868, pp. 76–81. (Online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ Federal Law Gazette 1925/368. In: Federal Law Gazette for the Republic of Austria , year 1925, pp. 1412–1420. (Online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ Opening of the BH branch Mureck on the website of the Styrian state government, accessed on January 3, 2017