“Wild” councilwoman: collecting without consideration?

In the current legal situation, it is not possible to withdraw the municipal council card from representatives who often ‘make their own’ shortly after the election, even if the respective representative is not carrying out any active activity, as in the present case.
The now former MFG city councilor Vera Schacher seems to be such a case: Since her election to the city parliament in autumn 2021, there has not been a single application from her until November 2022 and hardly any requests to speak or other activities. “Her actions border on total refusal to work, up until now she has been invisible and she has even shown open disinterest in meetings. The woman is a joke,” a councilor from another faction tells us.

“Local councillors, who may have been consciously planning their departure, can spend the entire term out of work and lounging in a hammock at taxpayer expense.”

Ms Schachner tells OÖN about her motivations that she can no longer support the “struggle for power, money and personal gain”. However, the fact that she then hangs onto these very financial “personal gains” without having actively done anything for them thus far creates a rather lopsided view.

Municipal councilors (but also members of the Landtag or the Nationalrat), who perhaps had consciously planned their departure in advance, can thus enjoy the entire six-year legislative period without work at taxpayers’ expense and without any risk in the hammock . Regardless of production, the whole is rewarded with a monthly salary of around 1,600 euros – and this 14 times a year.

70,000 euros as desired
The two wild mandates can basically spend the money on whatever they want: while every club or organizer has to prove even the smallest subsidy and prove it with bills, parliamentary groups do not have to have their expenses checked or disclosed.

The purpose specified by the legislator also remains vague. In the exact wording it is said that the funding must serve “the purpose of contributing to the formation of political opinion”. What that means is obviously a matter of interpretation. Traveling in the city, going out to dinner with friends or attending expensive seminars and training courses, buying technical equipment, laptops or a new mobile phone can also be interpreted as “participating in the formation of political opinions”.

But the other small factions such as NEOS, LINZplus or KPÖ (two mandates each) also receive around 70,000 euros in funding a year in addition to their salaries. Large fractions in the city council collect even more money and subsidies. In the largest faction, the Linz SPÖ, is:

• Faction funding/year -> approx. 23.000,-
• 22 mandates at 23,000 euros/year -> approx. 506,000.-
• 4 seats at 23.000 euro/year -> about 92.000,-
• Total annual funding SPÖ Parliamentary group Linz: approx. 621.000,-

Throughout the term, all parties in the Linz city council will receive funding of around 12 million euros.

Incidentally, the other parties in Linz were also often expelled or resigned as members of the city council, for example in 2020 at the FPÖ and in 2021 at the NEOS. At the time, the respective bosses continued as “wild” members of parliament, but also worked accordingly and tabled motions.

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