Erfurt (dpa/th) - Thuringia's head of state chancellery, Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff, has defended the state government's handling of an audit report by the state audit office on the practice of hiring state secretaries. "The state audit office decides what and when to check and also when it publishes its test results," said the left-wing politician on Wednesday in Erfurt. This independence ensures that the members of the Court of Auditors are independent and free from outside influence.
Hoff was responding to a request from the Thuringian CDU parliamentary group to publish the test report. The "Spiegel" had previously quoted from the paper. Accordingly, the Court of Auditors came to the conclusion that the hiring practice for state secretaries was "illegal", "incorrect" or "incomprehensible".
According to the Thuringian State Chancellery, the State Audit Office accuses the state government of not selecting the best when it comes to hiring state secretaries. In addition, documentation requirements were not sufficiently observed. The State Chancellery had rejected the criticism and justified this, among other things, with exceptions for political officials. In addition, both the state government and the Court of Auditors point out that this is an audit process that has not yet been completed.
The judicial policy spokesman for the CDU parliamentary group, Stefan Schard, said it was "disregard for taxpayers that Prime Minister Ramelow is stonewalling and obviously wants to sweep his actions under the carpet." Hoff called the CDU's demand for the report to be published strange. He recalled that the Court of Auditors was "an independent supreme state authority only subject to the law". "Against this background, the accusation that the government is "walling up" because it does not publish the incomplete audit process of the state audit office is astonishing, especially from a representative of the Judiciary Committee of the Thuringian state parliament."
