The Environmental Protection Agency exaggerates its penalties on polluters according to a new GAO report to be released later today, AP reports. GAO charges that EPA overstates its total penalty amounts by including fines that are never actually collected. From AP: The levied fines in 2004, 2005 and 2006 included a total of $227.2 million in so-called default judgments. The agency admitted these hard-to-collect fines were larger in those years; GAO said they are unlikely to be collected. It took a GAO report to uncover this problem because information on EPA penalties is not readily available to the public; and Bush administration officials would like to keep it that way. EPA's head of enforcement activities, Granta Nakayama, told GAO, "We do not believe that penalties collected should be publicly reported." Instead, EPA reports when fines are levied. (It makes for better press releases when the agency announces it is cracking down on polluters.) So not only is EPA being disingenuous with the information it presents, it would prefer to withhold the really important information from the public. The follow through is the key to meaningful deterrence. Industry needs to know it will be held, at the very least, financially accountable for violations of environmental laws. The public needs to know EPA is aggressively policing environmental scofflaws and that fines are finding their way into public coffers. The picture GAO paints is part of a much larger body of work illustrating the Bush administration's poor record on environmental enforcement. Voluntary compliance and chummy cooperation have severed the long arm of the law. According to AP, "Fines levied against polluters by the EPA decreased from $240.6 million in 1998 to $137.7 million in 2007." Update: Download the GAO report here