Andria, the mess of the autism center. The Region says no to the Foundation: it cannot be built

The public notice with which the ASL Bat solicited expressions of interest to create the Center of Excellence for Autism was published on November 8, 2024. But regional law 28, which established the requirements to identify the centers, was approved only five days later, on November 13, 2024. An extraordinary case of "administrative clairvoyance", as defined by the municipal councilor of Andria, Michele Di Lorenzo, former group leader of the Democratic Party who for this story was "distrusted" by the Democrats of the sixth province and has now gone to the opposition.

The affair, which saw the ASL first choose the proposal presented by the Foundation for Neurodiversity of Andria, chaired by the brother of the mayor of Andria, the Dem Giovanna Bruno, only to then make a hasty about-face when the «Gazzetta» reported all the coincidences and conflicts of interest behind it, arrived yesterday in the Third Commission of the Region (at the request of the five-star Grazia Di Bari). The city councilor Di Lorenzo took the part of the opposition, while neither the Health councilor, Raffaele Piemontese, nor the former Pd councilor Filippo Caracciolo, who is the promoter of the initiative (the 12 million destined to the Apulian ASL for centers of excellence on autism), participated in the hearing. And who on December 11, 2024 - when neither the Region nor the ASL had yet published the documents - had announced with a press release that the Bruno family Foundation would manage the center in the BAT.

The notice published even before the regional law says a lot about the rush there was to conclude the practice: to be kind, from November 13 (approval of the law) to November 18 (deadline) there were five days to prepare the application. A mess about which yesterday the former general director (now extraordinary commissioner) of the ASL Bat, Tiziana Di Matteo, tried to argue that «many of the things said in the newspapers are not correct». What seems to be incorrect, because it is ambiguous and contradictory, is rather the procedure followed by the ASL: on 28 November 2024, Di Matteo wrote to the Region that «it considers the solution proposed by the Apulian Foundation for Neurodiversity to be more in line with the purposes of the public notice», while on 2 January (after the articles in the «Gazzetta», and after the Health Department asked for clarifications) the ASL was first forced to publish the documents and then to backtrack, writing to the Region that two people had responded to the notice and that both participants «appear to be in possession of the participation requirements set out in the notice».

A huge mess in which conflicts of interest and coincidences intersect, all played out on the skin of autistic people ("Autism is a business - said Vito Tupputi of Assomeda - and you do nothing but let it remain that way"). The Bruno family Foundation (the mayor is among the promoters) obtained the land in surface rights from the Municipality of Andria in 2020 with the commitment to begin construction by July 2025. Caracciolo, who proposed the regional law on autism centers, was both the political patron of the mayor Bruno, as well as the tutelary deity of the ASL Bat: Caracciolo's fingerprints are on numerous appointments of the ASL, which he enters and exits at will, and even on the attribution of organizational positions. And it is strange, to say the least, that the ASL initially chose the very land of the Foundation with which it had made an agreement on August 22, 2024: "If they had wanted - Di Lorenzo pointed out yesterday - they could have asked the public bodies of the territory if they had suitable land or buildings. If instead you choose land assigned to a private individual, then how can you say that on the building that will be built on that land you have to start a procedure for co-management?" It is clear, and this is the misunderstanding on which we play, that those who build a center at their own expense on the "mandate" of the ASL then feel entitled to manage it.

The Region has however made it clear that the ASL Bat procedure is not good or in any case is not complete. The November council resolution, clarified the director of the Health department, Elena Memeo «was a provisional identification of locations by all the ASL, necessary to be able to quantify and find the resources relating to the renovation work. ASL Bt will have to clarify what intentions it has with respect to the identification of the location. At the same time, the organizational model and co-programming with the other bodies will be better regulated in addition to deciding which form of management should be used. A piece of land belonging to the Municipality would be fine, but it is granted to a Foundation: if the identification of the location were to remain, this would still be disconnected from the management».

In the meantime, the Foundation is trying to start work on the construction of the center. It did so by submitting a request for a single authorization to the Zes: the meeting of the conference of services is scheduled for tomorrow. It will have to be held synchronously because the file contains a "rejective opinion" from the Region, which states that the simplified procedure "cannot operate in this specific case", that the Municipality did not request a compatibility opinion (despite having rushed to give a positive opinion) and that the center is not compatible with regional planning. If the Zes were to issue the single authorization, the Foundation would be entitled to begin work.