The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Municipality of Las Marías. A qualified opinion is issued when the noncompliances individually or in the aggregate are significant, but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that the mayor appointed two formerly convicted persons, ineligible to hold positions in the Municipality, because they had been convicted of a felony and removed from public service. This situation caused the improper payment of $23,098, for which the Municipal Legislature must determine whether a recovery action is warranted. In addition, the officials who authorized these personnel transactions and the payments may be subject to the penalties contemplated in the Act 81-1991 of Autonomous Municipalities and in the Regulation for Eligibility for Public Service.
The five-finding audit points out that, for the promotion of three career service employees, no announcement was published nor was the competition and recruitment process followed in accordance with the merit principle. In addition, although the Municipality has had a Human Resources Performance Manual since 2005, as of February 29, 2020, the supervisors had not conducted personnel performance evaluations. This situation prevents identifying and addressing areas of personnel development need, among others.
The Report discloses that the Municipality hired a corporation to provide refrigeration services, whose president and sole officer had had his license expired since 2008 and his professional membership expired since 2015. The Municipality paid $4,562 for these services. This situation was referred for the consideration of the Department of Justice on November 20, 2019, and to the College and the Examining Board of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Technicians of Puerto Rico on October 8, 2019.
In addition, at the time the refrigeration contract was awarded, the necessary budgetary credits were not obligated until a year later. A similar situation had been commented on in the Audit Report M-18-04 of August 22, 2017.
The auditors identified that from 2017 to 2019, an employee of the municipal Legislature had collected $52,700 as a seller of advertisements for the yearbook of the Festival de la China Dulce, without holding the appointment. The employee visited the merchants, made the sale and received the payments by check. This situation, contrary to current law and regulations, does not allow maintaining adequate control of the collections made from the sale of advertisements.
The Report indicates that the Internal Audit Unit had not, as of February 29, 2020, conducted audits of the internal controls and operation of the Solución Integrada para Municipios Avanzados (SIMA) system. This system, which began to be used in 2016, contains the transactions related to the disbursement vouchers and the checks paid to contractors and suppliers.
The Municipality of Las Marías designated, as administrator of public documents, an employee who did not have the special appointment nor had attended the training offered by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in this regard. In addition, the public documents archive area did not have sufficient shelving and lacked smoke detectors, automatic sprinklers and a fire alarm system (see photos in Annex 1 of the Report).
This second and final Las Marías report covers the period from January 9, 2017 to February 29, 2020.
See Audit Report M-22-08.
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