In addition to cooperatives, the Association of Munich Housing Companies (VMW) also includes public housing associations such as the municipal Gewofag and the GWG. On Monday afternoon, representatives of the companies met for the general meeting in the small meeting room in the town hall. A routine appointment, actually. Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD) and City Planning Officer Elisabeth Merk spoke greetings. And they met Gewofag boss Klaus-Michael Dengler at the event. He is CEO of VMW.
A few rooms away, the members of the city council factions were meeting at the same time. Like every Monday, they discussed the political issues of the week. This time the affair surrounding the municipal housing association Gewofag and its boss Klaus-Michael Dengler was also on the agenda. In a forensic-linguistic report, he not only had texts by Gewofag employees examined, but also by two CSU city council members. The aim of the investigation was to find out who could have sent the anonymous letters in which massive allegations against Dengler had been made to the city’s audit office.
On Sunday, CSU faction leader Manuel Pretzl, one of the two people checked, reacted with outrage and demanded Dengler’s immediate dismissal. The Greens, the largest faction in the city council, also positioned themselves on Monday: “The fact that members of the supervisory board and the city council were checked with a forensic report is irritating to disturbing,” said parliamentary group leader Dominik Krause. Regarding the question of whether Dengler would continue to be acceptable as Gewofag boss, he explained: “The supervisory board and primarily the chairman of the supervisory board must clarify this. She is responsible for action.”
This means Mayor Dietl. The Greens give her the task of solving the muddled situation at Gewofag. Dietl himself is only very reluctant to comment publicly on Dengler’s personnel: “We will deal with the topic in the next supervisory board meeting and will then decide on how to proceed.” However, Dietl avoids making any commitment to the man who was previously considered the architect and key figure in the planned merger of Gewofag and GWG to form “Münchner Wohnen” in the town hall.
Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) still does not want to comment before the report of the audit office is available. The Supervisory Board meets as scheduled on this Tuesday morning. There are two politicians each from the Greens, SPD and CSU, as well as Treasurer Christoph Frey (SPD), City Planning Officer Elisabeth Merk and four employee representatives.
The chairman of the works council has since been dismissed without notice
CSU City Councilor Pretzl followed up again on Monday. He demanded that Reiter and Dietl disclose all processes related to the report. “Under no circumstances should the impression be created that the city tolerates this completely out of control ego trip by Dr. Dengler,” said Pretzl. His group will therefore also make a city council request. “Regardless of this, I will have my person included in the report legally checked,” announced Pretzl.
It remained open on Monday whether the CSU on the supervisory board was trying to get Dengler dismissed. Although she could possibly count on the four employee votes, she would not have a majority, since Chairwoman Dietl can decide in the event of a stalemate. The fact that the SPD and the Greens would drop Dengler still seemed unlikely, at least on Monday.
Another facet of Gewofag’s internal power struggle became known: Harald Wulf, chairman of the works council, declared that Gewofag had terminated him without notice. The report had shown that he was “with a very high probability” the author of the anonymous letter against Dengler, which Wulf denies. He is also ready to fight: “The works council has rejected the dismissal, now the matter is going to the labor court.” The dispute there could last for years. According to Wulf, withdrawing is out of the question for him.