The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Municipality of Aibonito. A qualified opinion is issued when noncompliances, individually or in the aggregate, are significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that the Municipality formalized a contract for $1.2 million for the construction of the José “Marrón” Aponte Coliseum without obtaining the construction permit from the Permit Management Office. It obtained the permit 39 days after construction began. This situation did not allow the regulatory agencies to exercise their oversight function.
The seven-finding audit notes that Aibonito did not submit to the Office of the Comptroller the position registries for July 2015 to June 2016 and from October 2016 to June 2017. Contrary to the law and current regulations, it had also not designated a liaison officer or a substitute.
The Municipality certified to us that it had $622,650 in overdue accounts for business license taxes from 1993 to 2016. Our auditors found copies of collection letters with no evidence that they had been processed and identified taxpayers who had not filed the volume declarations for the payment of business license taxes. Failing to collect on time results in those funds not being available to meet budgetary obligations, or in accounts becoming uncollectible.
The Report mentions that the person in charge of property did not conduct the annual physical inventories of the Municipality's property from 2013 to 2016. In addition, property receipts were not issued and several units had not been numbered or recorded in the Fixed Assets Module. Similar situations had been commented on in Audit Report M-14-58 of 2014.
The audit reveals other deficiencies in Aibonito, such as the internal auditor position remaining vacant from 2013 to 2017, the failure to prepare the Report on Assigned Legislative Funds and Their Use from 2013 to 2016, and the lack of information on the bids and a description of the bonds submitted by bidders in the minutes of the Bid Board.
The Report issues a Special Comment on 10 employees classified as temporary for up to more than seven years. This period exceeds the one-year term established by law. Other comments indicate that the Municipality had three civil lawsuits for $235,342 pending resolution in the courts and had not recovered $35,308, as recommended in Audit Report M-14-58. The Report covers the period from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2017
See the Audit Report M-19-34.
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