This is taken from The Guardian:

by Michael Leidig in Vienna
Friday February 17, 2006

TV licence fee payments in Austria are being used to refurbish public lavatories in the capital city Vienna, opposition politicians have revealed.

Every year the state broadcaster, the ORF, is forced to pay about a third of the income it receives from licence fee payments to the government and county councils in the form of a "cultural events promotion tax".

But Vienna, which receives almost 4m euros a year in licence fee money, has been caught using some of its funds to renovate its public toilets.

A spokeswoman for the GIS, the agency that collects the licence fee money, said: "The licence payment is a legally regulated fee that allows TV and radio owners to use their equipment.

"How the money is divided is also regulated by law, some goes for the running of the ORF, some goes to the treasury, and the rest ends up with the regional governments."

She added: "How the regional governments choose to use the money is not regulated by law, but it has been accepted for years that using the cash to renovate buildings considered part of the country's cultural heritage was a valid usage.

"Many toilets play classical music, such as the one in the underground station by the opera building. I could imagine that if it were to pay for that toilet it would be fair enough."

It was the opposition Green Party city councillor and spokesman for cultural affairs, Marie Ringler, who discovered that the Social Democrat-controlled Vienna city council had been using its TV licence fee money to update its lavatories.

It included a 36,000 euro renovation to public conveniences in the upmarket Parkring and Wollzeile areas.

Ms Ringler said: "Many Austrians mistakenly believe that the money they pay is for the running costs of the ORF and are unaware that part of this money, in the form of the cultural events promotion fund for example, goes straight to the city council."

She said the abuse of the funds was staggering, adding that she had found other payments had been made to businesses in the form of subsidies and that one member of the fund's advisory board had been given 123,000 euros to renovate his house, which was a listed building.