The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics. A qualified opinion is issued when the instances of noncompliance, individually or together, are significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that the Institute carried out 10 personnel transactions for $331 thousand and increased the salary of an administrative assistant, contrary to Act 66-2014, on the Fiscal and Operational Sustainability of the Government. The Institute did not request authorization from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to carry out these transactions.
This act established control measures applicable to all entities of the Executive Branch to reduce the budget deficit, and provided that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would be the agency responsible for its enforcement. Some of these measures were an additional 10% reduction to the payroll of trust employees, a freeze on recruitment, and the prohibition of increases in economic benefits.
The audit, with one finding, also points out that the Institute formalized a lease contract for $462,348 with a private company, without having requested authorization from the Puerto Rico Real Property Review Board, nor from the OMB. The Review Board was created by Act 235-2014, which prohibited leasing private real property without authorization.
These situations are attributed to the fact that the then executive director of the Institute and the Board understood that this entity had fiscal autonomy outside the Executive Branch. However, the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico established a republican form of Government with three branches, so the Institute cannot claim to be an entity outside any of the three branches of government. The Institute is a governmental entity of the Executive Branch.
The Report recommends that the OMB consider the situations discussed in the Finding and take the corresponding measures.
The Report covers the period from January 1, 2016, to September 30, 2018.
See the Audit Report DA-19-27.
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
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