The Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Municipality of Florida. A qualified opinion is issued when the noncompliance, individually or in the aggregate, is significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that the Municipality paid the Christmas bonus to three former employees, even though they had not rendered services to the Municipality for the required six-month period. In addition, payments were made to four former employees for the accumulated balances of vacation and sick leave without the required certification regarding the filing of income tax returns.
The five-finding audit points out multiple deficiencies related to bank reconciliations. For example, as of October 4, 2018, the preparation of the bank reconciliations for the Current Account was five months behind.
In addition, the examination of the reconciliation reflected a $42,295 difference with no explanation of the reasons for that difference. In the reconciliations of 22 accounts the corresponding adjustments were not made and the differences ranged from $26 to $2.8 million. The auditors also found 50 checks for $56,133 pending payment for periods of seven to 67 months. Similar situations had been noted in Audit Report M-16-23 of April 12, 2016.
From 2013 to 2018, the Municipality had not complied with submitting to the Office of the Comptroller 64 monthly payroll and position reports. The liaison officer did not fulfill her responsibility despite having received guidance from this Office on the process.
The Finance director of Florida certified that, as of February 21, 2018, she maintained 70 accounts receivable in municipal licenses dating back to 2003, totaling $348,378. In addition, she indicated that from 2013 to 2018 no collection efforts were made on the accounts receivable. Failing to collect these accounts may cause a lack of resources to meet budgetary obligations and lead them to become uncollectible.
Contrary to the applicable law and regulations, the mayor had not appointed an administrator of public documents for the audited period. It was observed that the two facilities designated for the archive of public documents—one in the urban center of Florida and the other in a former school—lacked equipment for humidity control, an alarm system, smoke detectors and automatic sprinklers.
The Office's auditors identified that, as of February 28, 2018, the Income and Disbursements Report reflected 99 special funds with economic resources of $1.3 million that had remained inactive for up to three years. This situation indicates that the former interim Finance director departed from the regulatory provisions by failing to evaluate the correction of those balances and reprogram the economic resources.
The report notes that 88 of the 110 employees of the Municipality of Florida maintain the classification of temporary employees for periods of up to 24 years. In addition, they had five civil lawsuits in the Courts pending resolution, and as of June 30, 2018, the Municipality had not recovered $154,549 for various matters noted in audit reports from 2011, 2014 and 2016.
The report covers the period from January 1, 2015 to October 31, 2018,
See Audit Report M-20-10.
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