The Principle of Fiscal Attachment: Rebuilding the Financing of Roadworthiness Testing in Decentralized Indonesia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38035/jlph.v6i6.3950Keywords:
Fiscal Attachment, Earmarking, Opsen, Roadworthiness Testing, Unfunded MandatesAbstract
When Indonesia rationalized regional levies through Law No. 1 of 2022, it removed the charge that financed periodic roadworthiness testing but left the statutory duty to test, and its criminal penalties, in force. District governments must now test buses and goods vehicles without a dedicated source of money. This article asks why that gap requires repair at statutory rank and what financing design can restore the testing duty within the new fiscal framework. Drawing on doctrinal and functional comparative analysis of Indonesian legislation, the European Union roadworthiness directive, and the 2023 Texas reform, it proposes the principle of fiscal attachment. Under that principle, when a statute imposes a safety duty that only recurrent public spending can perform, the instrument that finances the duty forms part of its conditions of operation, so a legislature that withdraws the instrument without a binding substitute alters the duty itself. A four-step test gives the principle discriminating power across comparable services. The article then designs a reconstructive norm built on an earmark of the motor vehicle tax surcharge within the existing road earmark, potential-based equalization, a bound spending vehicle, two-tier drafting with an anti-withdrawal clause, and validity-based performance indicators.
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