The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Municipality of Salinas. A qualified opinion is issued when noncompliance, individually or as a whole, is significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that 110 credit transfers totaling $641,338 were made without requiring the Finance director to issue the surplus certifications. This situation, which had already been commented on in Report M-16-13 of 2016, may cause deficits in the funds and limits the capacity to pay in order to meet the commitments for which the appropriations credits were separated.
The seven-finding audit notes deficiencies and lack of control with collections, since the clerk did not have the appointment nor the written authorization to perform that function. In addition, our auditors did not find, nor did the officials provide for examination, a receipt book of the collections, daily reconciliation reports or copies of the deposit slips made in July and August 2015. Nor did the Municipality maintain perpetual inventories of the blank checks.
From 2016 to 2017, the Municipality did not prepare the Monthly Report of Revenues and Disbursements, and from 2015 to 2017 it prepared a single Monthly Report. As of June 2017, the Monthly Report reflected 67 special funds with economic resources of $1.4 million that had remained inactive for more than a decade.
Our auditors found that Salinas does not maintain the files of the deeds of sale, appraisals, title studies and other documents of 142 of the 208 real properties of the Municipality. In addition, the Municipal Garage does not maintain a complete registry for each vehicle and, in the warehouses of parts, accessories and office materials, perpetual inventories of the existence of the supplies are not performed. These situations prevent maintaining adequate control, foster the commission of errors and prevent verifying the correctness of the expenses.
Contrary to the applicable law and regulation, the employee who administers public documents in Salinas is not certified nor has she taken the training to perform those functions. In addition, the archive contains documents from the '90s, the last disposal of documents was performed in 2005, and the facilities do not have an emergency exit, smoke detectors or ventilation. Similar situations regarding the municipal archive had also been noted in Report M-16-13 of 2016.
The audit comments that the Municipality of Salinas has accumulated deficits in the Operational Fund of $1.7 million for 2015, $3 million for 2016 and $4.3 million for 2017. The Monthly Report of 2017 reflects that the Municipality incurred overdrafts totaling $1.5 million.
This first Report on Salinas covers the period from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2017.
See Audit Report M-19-41.
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
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