Verbandsgemeinde (Rhineland-Palatinate)

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Verbandsgemeinden in Rhineland-Palatinate are administrative units in the legal form of local authorities that were formed from neighboring municipalities in the same district for reasons of the common good as part of the administrative reform in Rhineland-Palatinate . As municipal associations, they have the same legal status as municipalities and districts and serve to concentrate and thus strengthen the administrative power of the municipalities belonging to the association ( local communities and cities) without them giving up their political independence.

Tasks and structure

In contrast to the municipalities, a certain area of ​​responsibility is not constitutionally assigned to the association municipalities (cf. municipal self-government in the case of municipalities). Rather, this is essentially determined by law. The tasks assigned to you according to the municipal code of Rhineland-Palatinate in connection with the task transitional regulation include

In addition, the municipalities manage the administrative business of the municipalities belonging to the association (independent local municipalities or cities) in their name and on their behalf.

In addition, the association is responsible in its own name to fulfill the state tasks assigned to the local communities or cities (commissioned matters), unless expressly stated otherwise.

Associated municipalities have their own elected municipal council ( Verbandsgemeinderat ) and their own administration (Verbandsgemeindeverwaltung) with a full-time mayor as administrative manager. The mayor of a municipality may be used in personal union at the same time voluntary mayor of a municipality be ( § 71 of the Gemeindeordnung Rheinland-Pfalz).

Association-free cities and municipalities perform the administrative tasks of an association municipality, which are listed in the municipal code of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Association cities are municipalities with the status of a city that belong to an association municipality. Usually they are the seat and namesake of the respective association municipality. Otherwise, municipalities belonging to the association are referred to as local communities ; these can also be the administrative headquarters of an association municipality.

In other countries there are similar structures to the association communities with different names (e.g. integrated community or administrative community ) and in some cases also with different tasks.

history

Starting position

Against the background of the five different administrative structures that have evolved over time in the parts of the newly formed state of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1946, still at the time of the French occupation , the following situation emerged with regard to the municipal administrations:

The German municipal ordinance of January 30, 1935 standardized the 41 municipal ordinances in force in Germany until then.

With regard to the administration of the municipalities, from 1946 onwards, the municipal ordinances existing before 1935 resulted in particular differences with regard to local and partly regional administration. In the administrative districts of Koblenz and Trier , the previous structures of the administrative authorities remained, in which a certain number of sometimes very small communities was administered centrally, but the independence of the communities remained. In contrast, the municipalities in the other administrative districts were not familiar with these structures. On September 27, 1948, the state of Rhineland-Palatinate created a self-administration law for the municipalities in which historical and regional differences were taken into account.

Functional and territorial reform 1965 to 1974

In the second half of the 1960s, an administrative reform began, which was gradually laid down and implemented in a total of 18 administrative simplification laws in Rhineland-Palatinate from 1966 to 1974 . In addition, there was the state law amending local constitutional regulations and preparing for the reorganization of municipalities of July 16, 1968 and the association regulations of October 1, 1968. The official regulations in force since 1948 were repealed when the association regulations came into force.

With the association model, Rhineland-Palatinate wanted to take into account the good experiences with the official constitution in the former Prussian Rhine province and the communal mayor's office in the former Bavarian Palatinate. With the introduction of the Verbandsgemeindeordnung (Verbandsgemeindeordnung) in place of the earlier administrative ordinances, the Verbandsgemeinde were established as a “community” and, as a result, entrusted with real self-administration tasks in addition to order and cash matters. The association communities should initially be established as a transitional form to so-called “ unitary communities ”. However, they were then very soon accepted alongside the municipalities and districts as a permanent type of administration at the communal level and were no longer made available for disposal in the following period.

The Verbandsgemeindeordnung was in turn repealed on March 17, 1974, and the remaining provisions were incorporated into the municipal code for Rhineland-Palatinate in Sections 64 to 73.

The following chronological sequence resulted from the association's municipal regulations:

  • The 132 offices in the then administrative districts of Koblenz and Trier were converted into association communities on October 1, 1968.
  • The municipalities belonging to the district in the area of ​​the former administrative districts of Montabaur , Pfalz and Rheinhessen had the opportunity to form association municipalities until December 31, 1971 in a "voluntary phase". The benchmark for an association community was 7,500 inhabitants.

As part of the voluntary phase , the Verbandsgemeinden Altenglan , Dudenhofen , Grünstadt-Land , Hahnstätten , Hochspeyer , Höhr-Grenzhausen , Kirchheimbolanden , Kusel , Landstuhl , Lauterecken , Offenbach an der Queich , Otterbach , Otterberg , Ramstein-Miesenbach , were established by December 21, 1971 . Ransbach-Baumbach , Rodalben , Schönenberg-Kübelberg , Waldmohr , Wirges and Wolfstein .

  • Association communities that did not arise in the voluntary phase were formed on a legal basis, in the previous administrative region of Montabaur on the basis of the twelfth state law on administrative simplification in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate , in the administrative region of Rheinhessen-Palatinate , merged in 1968, on the basis of the thirteenth state law . Both laws were passed on March 1, 1972 and came into force on April 22, 1972.

As part of various administrative simplification laws, territorial changes have been made, for example the amalgamation of association communities or the integration of local communities.

In addition to the creation of the administrative structures, changes were also made to the responsibilities at the various levels of local government, which was also known as “functional reform”. The Eleventh State Law of February 24, 1972 transferred tasks that were previously assigned to the districts to the association communities or to the communities not belonging to the association.

Local and administrative reform since 2010

As early as 2006, the Rhineland-Palatinate Council of Ministers had passed a resolution according to which the reform should essentially relate to three main topics:

  • Optimization of responsibilities for the performance of public tasks,
  • Optimization of procedures and
  • Optimization of the municipal area structures.

On September 28, 2010, the First State Law on Local and Administrative Reform was passed. With regard to the association communities, it was determined that they should include at least 12,000 inhabitants (main residence on June 30, 2009). In the case of association communities that have an area of ​​more than 100 square kilometers and more than 15 local communities, the minimum size may be below the minimum.

Association-free communities and association communities are to be merged with neighboring community-free communities and association communities of the same district. Furthermore, in exceptional cases, the local congregations of a union community can be incorporated into several other union communities, the local communities of one union community and the local communities of several other union communities can be merged to form new union communities, and a local community can be separated from one union community and incorporated into another union community.

In the case of the voluntary incorporation of a non-union community or a union community into another union community, resolutions of the community council of the previous union community, the union councils of the previous and the receiving union community as well as the local community councils of the local communities of the previous and the receiving union community are required, with which the will agrees is declared to this voluntary change of area.

In the second state law on local and administrative reform , also from September 28, 2010, were u. a. the self-administration tasks of the municipalities added as follows:

  • The municipality can perform the tasks of economic development and tourism, as far as they are of supra-local importance, as self-administration tasks.

See also

literature

  • Johannes Dietlein, Markus Thiel: Administrative reform in Rhineland-Palatinate. A contribution to the debate about the future of the association's constitution . In: Series of publications by the Rhineland-Palatinate Association of Municipalities and Cities . tape 15 . Mainz 2006.

Web links

Wiktionary: Verbandsgemeinde  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ State ordinance on the remuneration and service expense allowance of the full-time municipal electoral officers. State government of Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on July 10, 2010 .
  2. ^ Rudolf Oster: Local politics in Rhineland-Palatinate . In: Andreas Kost, Hans-Georg Wehling (Hrsg.): Local politics in the Federal Republic of Germany. An introduction . VS Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-531-13651-8 , pp. 220–237 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ^ A b Günter Püttner: Handbook of municipal science and practice . tape 1 . Springer, 2007, ISBN 3-540-23793-3 , pp. 142, 577 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ a b c History of the Daun Association. (No longer available online.) Verbandsgemeinde Daun, archived from the original on May 1, 2010 ; Retrieved April 5, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vgv-daun.de
  5. ^ A b c d Johannes Dietlein, Markus Thiel: Administrative reform in Rhineland-Palatinate . 2006, p. 30th ff . ( PDF (654.5 KB) ( Memento of December 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) [accessed on November 19, 2010]). Administrative reform in Rhineland-Palatinate ( Memento of the original dated December 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gstbrp.de
  6. ^ Hellermann J., Görisch C .: Sustainable municipal structures in Rhineland-Palatinate . 2003.
  7. ↑ a b c First State Law on Local and Administrative Reform of September 28, 2010 (PDF; 685 kB)
  8. ^ Second state law on local and administrative reform of September 28, 2010