Left fears chaos due to "communal testing law"

The Left Party in the Saxon state parliament fears chaos as a result of the so-called Municipal Trials Act. It is intended to give municipalities the opportunity to deviate from state law requirements for a limited period of time and to test new solutions for their own task fulfillment. "This law gives cities and municipalities the freedom and opportunity to experiment in order to make administrative standards and procedures more modern, digital and uncomplicated for citizens and companies within the scope of special projects," said Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU), praising the law presented at the end of April.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, this implements a central concern of the coalition agreement - reducing bureaucracy at municipal level and strengthening municipal self-administration and personal responsibility.

Left: Law would effectively override state law

Left politician Rico Gebhardt sees things differently. "I can understand that the state government may want to find and abolish outdated rules in order to ease the burden on local authorities. But this draft goes far beyond that. It allows mayors, district councils and administrative bodies to de facto override a significant part of state law." The wording of the law is so broad and vague that ministries can only reject corresponding applications in exceptional cases. The state parliament as legislator is left out of the equation.

No orderly reduction in bureaucracy, but chaos

According to Gebhardt, municipal and district councils should also be involved. Voluntary local elected representatives are dependent on transparent procedures, comprehensible decisions as well as information and control rights. "The law would also have significant consequences for citizens. If even standards for participation and transparency were subject to "experimentation", this would result in an almost unmanageable patchwork. "Then rules would still apply in some cities or districts, while they are no longer in force in the neighboring municipality. That would not be an orderly reduction in bureaucracy, but chaos."

Leftists see standards called into question

"The state government could just as easily have all the railings removed to find out which ones are necessary based on crashes," Gebhardt made a comparison. If legal regulations are actually unnecessary or outdated, only the legislator can change or repeal them. Ministries are not authorized to do so. "Cities, municipalities and districts do not suffer from too much democracy, but from underfunding, a lack of staff, an investment backlog and an overload of tasks. Instead of tackling these structural causes, the state government is questioning democratic standards and the rule of law."