In The City, One Area Detects Environmental Damage, but another One Is Responsible For Collecting Fines
<p style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">On one hand, the Environmental Protection Agency finds violations and on the other hand, the application of fines is the responsibility of the Government Control Agency, which then, keeps the money collected. According to the Audit of the City of Buenos Aires "overlap of police power is worsens because of the lack of communication channels" between the agencies.</span></p> <div> </div>
Created in 1998, the City of Buenos Aires has an area that is responsible for controlling the quality of the environment: the Environmental Protection Agency (APRA, for its acronym in Spanish).
According to the decree ordering its creation, 49/08, it is "an independent, flexible, and non-bureaucratic organ, that programs, plans, and implements the necessary measures to comply with environmental policy actions" of the City of Buenos Aires. However, the competence of the APRA is limited only to established violations by its agents. A report by the Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) states that if any environmental foul worthy of a fine application is detected, then another agency makes its appearance, the Governmental Agency Control (AGC, for its acronym in Spanish), which then applies the fine and keeps the money.
According to the Audit, this scenario generates "objective weakness in the Environmental Protection Agency" for "superposition of police power" between the two areas involved.
"In the system formed, APRA plans and implements controls, being detached from the administrative decision, which is carried by the AGC (through the Directorate of Inspection and Control -DGFICO-)," says the report, which was approved this year, adding that "the situation is compounded by the lack of formal channels of communication and information that would allow awareness about what was done and its feedback."
The auditors also commented that "the double competition between agencies and the untying of APRA in the final link, not only generates inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the system itself, but also conceptually equated 'environmental failure' with any other type of failure, devaluing the issue (environmental), typical of the cities in these times."
Regarding the money from fines, the Audit stated that even though the Protection Agency carries out inspections, the Government Control Agency considers those resources as "its own". Therefore, the report concludes that it would be "reasonable for both areas to share a certain percentage of the proceeds."