Análise jurídica da contribuição para o custeio da iluminação pública no Brasil: COSIP

Abstract

The public illumination represents the essential unconditional source for the community quality of life. Besides illuminating streets, avenues, squares, historical monuments and others public areas, favoring leisure, commerce and the tourism, while improving the image of the cities, the public illumination, trough the civilization, constituted, in such a way, one of the vectors for the public security in the question of the traffic of pedestrians and vehicles as much in the prevention to crime. The privatization of the electric sector incited the debate about the public illumination difficult situation in Brazil, because of controversies in the definition of the effective ability and responsibility for the service installment, as well as in function of advances and retrocession in the search process of the expenditure source equation and financing of this essential public service. The present research has as objective, analyzing the legal questions that involve the financing of the electric energy consumption for the service installment of public illumination in its aspects, considering sinc e the question to whom the responsibility for its installment competes effectively, the tax adopted to finance this service, systemize the existing irregularities in the contribution collection for the expenditure of the public illumination. Some data concerning the importance of the public illumination in the energy aspect had been raised, pointing the participation of the public illumination in the electric energy consumption, as well as information about the service installment of public illumination in the concessionaire point of view, concerning electric energy public service. The final results indicate the existence of irregularities in the contribution collection for expenditure of public illumination - COSIP, introduced in the Brazilian legal system by the Constitutional Emendation nº 39, of 2002, aiming at taking care of thousands of Brazilian mayor’s claim. Amongst the irregularities, the violation to the constitutional principles, as well as the legal nature of the collection have been the target of doctrinal quarrels and debates between the ones involved in the utility relationship of the concessionaire versus the responsible entity for the service installment, city halls versus townspeople and concessionaires versus users/consumer. It is inferred that there is an urgent necessity of a better evaluation and build an equation of the financing source for the service expenditure of public illumination, that is under municipal authority. With the results’ analysis, it is concluded that the cost of public xiv illumination expenditure is becoming, in fact, each time more an insoluble problem, because it cannot assume the contribution, but also cannot pretend to have the legal nature of a tax. Facing the facts, identifications finally appear in order to solve the impasse, either with the institution of a tribute compatible with the constitutional rules, or the suggestion of more reasonable and fair tributes.