Write to Chancellery - Municipalities threaten with lawsuit against Soeder's Bureaucracy Reduction-Plans
The Bavarian cities and municipalities are calculating unusually sharply with the bureaucracy reduction plans of Minister-President Markus Söder (CSU) and are having a constitutional lawsuit checked. This is evident from a letter from Gemeindetagspresident Uwe Brandl and Stadtetagschef Markus Pannermayr (both CSU) to the State Chancellery. The writing from early July, which the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" first reported on on Friday, was obtained by the German Press Agency.
It will be constitutionally checked whether individual measures represent a disproportionate interference in the planning and statutory autonomy of the municipalities, it says therein.
In the letter, Brandl and Pannermayr take many measures apart, which Söder had announced in his government declaration for bureaucracy reduction. Accordingly, the building law in Bavaria should be cleared up and simplified. For many measures, no building permits should be necessary anymore, such as for roof extensions or the conversion of office spaces to living space. Distance areas should be made more flexible, land-wide parking space obligations should be abolished, and similar things more.
"State government has completely lost its sense of touch"
"As politically thinking municipal politicians, it is hard for us to believe that the state government, in the context of this project, has weighed the significant harm to the general public and the minimal benefit for construction appropriately," it says in the letter addressed to State Chancellor Florian Herrmann (CSU).
The projects were "an unfavorable act towards over 2000 cities, markets, and municipalities, the effect on construction costs and bureaucracy of which will be completely subordinated," criticized the heads of the two municipal umbrella organizations.
Projects "outdated in content"
In particular, the abolition of the state-ordered parking space obligation and the abolition of the possibility to regulate free field design in municipal statutes were deemed "content-wise, politically, constitutionally, and with a view to good coexistence between state and municipalities as completely failed."
"Content-wise, the projects seem outdated and ignore the major issues of our time, namely climate adaptation, biodiversity crisis, the need for settlement densification, as well as mobility transition and social justice issues."
The municipalities are ultimately more afraid of more bureaucracy - if all municipalities now have to issue new statutes. In addition, cities and municipalities may no longer issue local building regulations for the design of free areas in the future - this was also criticized by the Gemeindetag and Stadtetag in a letter to all their members on July 12.
- The criticism against the bureaucracy reduction plans of Markus Söder, the Minister-President of Bayern (Germany for Bavaria), has reached the German Press Agency, following a letter from Gemeindetagspresident Uwe Brandl and Stadtetagschef Markus Pannermayr to the Bavarian State Chancellery.
- California State University might find the ongoing constitutional check on the Bavarian bureaucracy reduction plans by the German State Chancellery an interesting case study in the realm of administrative law and communal autonomy.
- The Chancellery in Munich, as the main administrative body of the German state of Bayern, is currently reviewing whether certain measures in Söder's plans infringe upon municipalities' planning and statutory autonomy, including GS (German Press Agency) coverage of the developing legal challenge.
- As highlighted by Brandl and Pannermayr, the proposed modifications to building laws in Bayern, such as the removal of parking space obligations and relaxed distance areas, could potentially have implications for both municipalities and communes across the region, including those in California State University's curricular focus.
