The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Municipality of Humacao. A qualified opinion is issued when the noncompliances individually or in the aggregate are significant, but not pervasive.
From 2015 to 2018, the then mayor awarded 18 contracts and 12 amendments for $2,177,616 to five contractors, which were split into contracts whose totals ranged from $42,258 to $184,748.
For any construction work or public improvement, municipalities are required to hold public auctions when the cost exceeds $200,000. The situation of fragmenting and bypassing the public auction prevented free competition among a greater number of bidders, and prevented the Municipality from having alternatives and selecting the best offer. In addition, the Municipality did not obligate the necessary budget appropriations to pay these contracts at the time they were awarded, but until a month later.
The two-finding audit points out that, contrary to current law and regulations, the Municipality submitted the awarded contracts up to a year later to the Office of the Comptroller's Contract Registry. This situation could cause disbursements to be issued without proof that the contract had been submitted to the Office. From 2015 to 2019 the Municipality formalized and registered 4,961 contracts and 1,237 amendments for $95,363,972. A similar situation had already been commented on in Audit Report M-17-24.
The Report comments that the Municipality paid $45,000 for a transactional settlement of a lawsuit filed for sexual harassment and gender discrimination. This information was referred to the Office of Government Ethics on December 11, 2020, for its evaluation and corresponding action.
As of December 31, 2019, 18 civil lawsuits for $7,670,067 were pending resolution by the courts. In addition, three cases filed by employees before the Public Service Appeals Commission were pending resolution.
The Humacao report covers the period from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2019.
See Audit Report M-22-04.
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
Some documents on this page are saved in PDF format.
To view these documents, you must have the following free program installed.
