The Greens are in favor of the resignation of their district mayor in Mitte, Stephan von Dassel. The Greens faction voted for this in the district assembly (BVV) according to information from the daily mirror on Monday evening in an extraordinary meeting.
The members voted with a narrow majority to ask the district mayor from their own party to resign. Eight people voted in favor of the demand with six no votes and two abstentions, according to faction circles.
If von Dassel does not comply voluntarily, the parliamentary group wants to initiate a voting procedure. A majority of parliamentary group members voted in favor of this. The parliamentary group discussed the case for around three hours in the evening.
According to reports, the decisive factor behind the demand for his resignation was an SMS from Dassels, which suggested that the district mayor would have been willing to pay private money in order to push through his preferred candidate in a recruitment process. The case has “an insane taste,” said the faction.
The situation is particularly annoying for the Greens, because if Dassels were to withdraw, the party would lose one of its three posts in the district office. In addition to von Dassel, school councilor Stefanie Remlinger and transport councilor Almut Neumann are currently sitting in the district office, which is filled according to the strength of the factions.
However, since Ingrid Bertermann switched from the Greens to the Left parliamentary group after the last election, the party is now only entitled to two seats. The SPD will probably be awarded a second city council post for this. But even this prospect did not prevent a vote against the district mayor. “That was also a moral question, where do we stand.”
[If you want all the latest news live on your phone, we recommend our app, which you can download here for Apple and Android devices.]
Von Dassel is said to have offered an applicant a private payment in the course of a hiring process if the applicant would refrain from filing a lawsuit against the Mitte district. This is suggested by text messages from Dassels submitted to the Tagesspiegel, as well as statements by the applicant in an interview with this newspaper.
The highly paid position of head of the control service in the district office was initially awarded to a close party confidant of Dassels. He had previously organized the election campaign for the district mayor and is also a board member of the district Greens in Mitte. However, he was unable to take up the post because of the lawsuit filed by the unsuccessful competitor.
After the allegations became known on Twitter, Von Dassel himself stated that he had never offered any money payments. At the same time, the district mayor admitted that he had checked whether the lawsuit could be averted by paying money through the district office so that his preferred candidate could take up the post. The district mayor called this a “mistake”.
In the affair of possible influence on a recruitment process, the district mayor of Berlin-Mitte, Stephan von Dassel, wants the allegations against him to be independently investigated. For this reason, the Greens politician asked the Senate Chancellery to initiate disciplinary proceedings against him, as the German Press Agency learned from his office on Monday.
[Keep an overview: Every morning from 6 a.m., editor-in-chief Lorenz Maroldt and his team report on Berlin’s most important news and biggest excitement in the Tagesspiegel newsletter Checkpoint. Free and compact: checkpoint.tagesspiegel.de]
Von Dassel hopes that the procedure will be investigated neutrally and that he will be relieved of the suspicion of a misdemeanor, it said. The procedure is “in agreement” with Berlin’s Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD).
She had previously quickly demanded clarity from the accused. “The Governing Mayor expects a speedy clarification of the allegations made,” a spokeswoman for the Senate Chancellery told the Tagesspiegel.
As Governing Mayor, Giffey is responsible for supervising the district mayors, who act as temporary elected civil servants during their term of office and are accordingly subject to civil servant law.
