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🇦🇷 Argentina /Crime & Justice

Court Orders Buenos Aires Municipality to Reveal Rural Tax Revenue and Spending

From La Nación · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

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  • A court in Junín ordered the municipality of Rojas to provide details on rural-related tax collections and spending within 45 days.
  • The case followed an information request by local agricultural groups that received no response from the administration.
  • Producers are seeking to determine whether revenue from road and other rural service fees is being used for the purposes for which it was collected.

A judge has given the municipality of Rojas 45 days to explain how much it collects from rural producers and how it uses the money. The order followed a legal challenge by the Sociedad Rural de Rojas, the Rojas branch of the Argentine Agrarian Federation and Coninagro after the local administration failed to answer an information request.

The case concerns fees for the conservation, repair and improvement of the rural road network, as well as charges linked to security, hygiene and the control of brands and marks. Producers want to know whether the money raised corresponds to the services for which the fees were created, amid complaints about the condition of rural roads.

For 10 years, Rojas’s rural roads were in impeccable condition.

· Alberto del Solar DorregoThe Rojas Rural Society vice president described the earlier system that allocated most road-fee revenue to rural roads.

The ruling came from Administrative Litigation Court No. 1 in Junín, in a case titled “Coninagro de Rojas and others v. Municipality of Rojas.” Judge Juan Atilio Bazzani signed the decision. Local agricultural leaders say the district has an extensive rural road network, estimated at about 1,169 to 1,200 kilometres, across roughly 205,000 hectares.

The problem is not how to repair rural roads, but with what.

· Alberto del Solar DorregoHe argued that insufficient funding, rather than technical methods, is the main obstacle to road repairs.

Alberto del Solar Dorrego, vice president of the Rojas Rural Society, recalled an earlier system in which producers helped administer road-fee revenue. He said Municipal Ordinance 2649, adopted in 2002, directed 85% of the road-fee funds to rural roads and included producer participation in their management. “For 10 years, Rojas’s rural roads were in impeccable condition,” he told La Nación.

He said the arrangement ended after a later administration repealed the ordinance and moved the funds into general revenue, leaving road officials with limited resources. “The problem is not how to repair rural roads, but with what,” he said. He added: “If the municipality does not allocate road-fee funds to repairing the roads, saying that a road will be repaired is a utopia, a fantasy.”

If the municipality does not allocate road-fee funds to repairing the roads, saying that a road will be repaired is a utopia, a fantasy.

· Alberto del Solar DorregoHe criticized the municipality’s handling of revenue collected through the rural road fee.
About this summary

Originally published by La Nación in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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