There are 71 districts in Bavaria, and if the 71 district administrators are really their kings, as the top politicians who occasionally travel from Munich or Berlin like to flatter them, then these democratic kings have had a new president since Wednesday. At their annual meeting in Prien am Chiemsee, they elected District Administrator Thomas Karmasin (CSU) from Fürstenfeldbruck to the head of the Bavarian District Council with a large majority. Karmasin follows Christian Bernreiter (CSU), who was appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Construction and Transport by Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) at the end of February. Bernreiter’s successor as District Administrator in Deggendorf is elected on May 15, for the CSU the former Minister of Art Bernd Sibler is applying.
Unlike in Deggendorf, there was only one candidate in the election for the president of the district council. Karmasin, who was elected with only one dissenting vote, had thoroughly prepared his candidacy in all district associations, and the association bodies had unanimously proposed him. Vice Presidents are Thomas Habermann (CSU) from Rhön-Grabfeld, Herbert Eckstein (SPD) from Roth and Tamara Bischof (FW) from Kitzingen.
Karmasin didn’t really have to introduce himself to his district administrator colleagues, he has been vice-president of the district council since 2014: “For a keynote speaker with many years of experience, it’s a change: you step up to the microphone and nobody packs up,” he said during his application speech at the meeting on Wednesday. Like Bernreiter in the previous eight years, Karmasin will instead be the first to raise his voice when it comes to the interests of the Bavarian counties. “We have a lot of work to do,” said Karmasin in his application speech and mentioned, among other things, the financial equalization, which should not become the golden rule for the municipalities. Federal and state subsidies are gladly accepted, but under no circumstances should they be attributed to municipal finances. These served “local self-government and not to carry out state programs”.
Karmasin’s path into local politics was atypical. Before the CSU pulled the Germeringer lawyer out of a hat as a district administrator candidate in the 1996 local elections, he had never made a public political appearance. Nevertheless, the then completely unknown 33-year-old managed the surprise coup of beating the SPD incumbent. The fact that he was chosen may also have been due to his appearance. This earned him the reputation of being every mother-in-law’s darling. However, that alone would not have been enough to reliably lead one of the largest districts in Bavaria with 220,000 inhabitants politically for the past 26 years without making major mistakes.
The local politician is enthusiastic about wind power
Karmasin is considered a modern politician, for whom life is not just about politics. He loves Italy, likes to travel, cooks and enjoys life as well as chatting with like-minded people and opponents at appointments. He has no fear of contact. When he is needed, as in the case of the 1999 Pentecost flood and other catastrophes, he knows what to do and interrupts the holiday. He does not hold back with his opinion, even if it offends or provokes.
Karmasin is a fan of wind power. However, due to the 10-H rule, almost ten years ago he was no longer able to implement his plans to cover up to half of the local electricity requirement with wind energy from the district. And Karmasin was already open to an alliance with the Greens in the district council at a time when their party for the CSU was not yet acceptable. As a local politician, you can definitely describe him as a man of conviction. Although he would have had the opportunity, he never applied for a seat in the Landtag or Bundestag. The election for the President of the District Council is now the fulfillment of a long term in office.
At the panel discussion after the election with the prime minister, there was broad agreement between Karmasin and Söder. The districts and their district administrators – “the local kings and queens” – have been working in a state of emergency for three years, said Söder with a view to the corona pandemic. Individual district administrators, on the other hand, put together a kind of wish list: sufficient space for wind energy, maintenance and expansion of small hydroelectric power plants, effective digitization of administration and a reliable economic future for the municipal hospitals are among others. Söder blamed the federal government for problems, also to the satisfaction of the district administrators, who mostly belong to his CSU and the Bavarian coalition partner Freie Wahler.