A tunnel for the Erdingen town hall, the German Museum and more: These are Bavaria's tax sins in 2020

Building cost explosions, relocations of authorities and a curious tunnel: where the taxpayers 'association in Bavaria denounces cases of dubious handling of taxpayers' money.

• It is an eternally recurring

  dilemma

  : construction projects are always more expensive than originally planned.

• The

  Taxpayers Association

  has published its

  2020 Black Book

  - with annoying cases in Bavaria too.

• Where in the Free State is money being wasted unnecessarily?

  Here is a summary of the bizarre

  tax wastes

  .

Munich - A tunnel is actually supposed to connect, but in Erding an

divides

the city's citizens.

While the majority in the city council and Lord Mayor Max Gotz (CSU) are defending the 28-meter-long Erdinger tunnel between the old town hall and the new administrative building in the city center, many citizens are just shaking their heads at the 1.1 million euro project *.

This is mainly due to the reason for the construction:

Association of taxpayers via tunnel in Erding: "Simple zebra crossing would have done it too"

In terms of data protection law alone, the tunnel is necessary so that when walking across the street wind and weather do not contaminate or blow away sensitive data such as construction plans or records, the town hall lawyer once said.

It was also

argued that

between the buildings were

.

Lord Mayor Gotz also stated to the Bund der Steuerpayers (BdS) that he wanted to prevent the administrations from "drifting apart" in the long term.

For Maria Ritch, Vice President of the BdS in Bavaria, this is a clear case of tax wastage.

She says: "A simple zebra crossing would have done it too."

Every year

denounces

“public waste” in its black book in the federal, state and local governments.

Often it is about costs that got out of hand, money for controversial projects or complete bad planning.

In addition to the

, which the

lists under the category “to smile about”, seven other cases from Bavaria have landed in the Black Book.

💸 "Planning too cheaply becomes expensive".

This is the analysis result from @BdSteuerzahler in their # Schwarzbuch2020.

There is also tax waste in # Corona times, according to the Association of #Taxpayers.

#Schwarzbuch #Taxes #Tax money https://t.co/KeFKv13u4j

- BR24 (@ BR24) October 27, 2020

Augsburg State Theater: renovation costs in all probability almost twice as high

In most cases it is about

.

For example at the

, the renovation of which will almost double the costs.

Estimated at 186 million euros in 2016, the BdS expects total costs of around 322 million euros by the planned completion in six years.

"Every private property developer would go bankrupt if he planned like this," criticizes Ritch.

Refurbishment and renovation costs have gotten out of hand not only in Augsburg *.

It looks very similar in Munich.

For example at the

, where renovation costs have soared from original 400 million euros to 745 million.

According to the taxpayers' association, the building authorities initially estimated the

renovation of the

to be 80 million - meanwhile 231 million euros have been estimated.

Also because of cost explosions during construction, the Schwarzbuch runs the

am Main

(an increase from 15.3 to 20 million euros) and the

in the Upper Palatinate.

A section there is being converted into a university for the public service - the police department has been relocated there.

But because various contaminated sites came to light during the construction work, the construction costs have almost doubled.

Black Book 2020: Taxpayers' Association criticizes the cost-benefit ratio

In addition to these construction projects, the taxpayers' association is also

not satisfied

with the

to structurally weak rural regions.

The plan has "good approaches", said Ritch, but with estimated costs in the three-digit million range for the various relocations from the administrative court to the building ministry, the

not right.

And these points were criticized by the Bavarian Taxpayers' Association in 2019:

And finally, the BdS criticized a planned

for Bavarian farmers.

Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU) announced the five million euro image campaign last autumn as a “confidence-building measure” after the rejection of the species protection referendum.

Among other things, a show farm is planned in Munich, but the

sparked in

between.

The Taxpayers' Association judges: Even after the pandemic, the question arises whether an image campaign is worth so much money to Bavarian taxpayers.