The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico (OCPR) issued today a qualified opinion of the fiscal operations of the Municipality of San Germán. A qualified opinion is issued when the noncompliances individually or together are significant, but not pervasive.
The audit report notes, among other findings, two agreements contrary to the Act for the assignment of five municipal employees in the municipal enterprise of the San Germán Surf & Fun Water Park. Contrary to the Act, in both agreements (one signed on May 1, 2017 and another on July 2, 2018) it was established that the employees would continue as employees of the Municipality with the same fringe benefits obtained by the other employees in the same status or classification, and that they could be reinstated to their regular positions in the Municipality. These five assigned employees were in charge of performing maintenance tasks (3), accounting (1) and sales (1) at the Water Park for periods that fluctuated from 15 days to 4 years. This, without changing their status and condition to that of private employees.
The finding notes that the tasks related to the contracts, the accounting, the purchases, the disbursements, and the recording and deposit of the collections were performed from the Municipality by municipal employees. The hours dedicated to the tasks of the Water Park by these employees were not accounted for by the Municipality, so the amount of the salaries paid to them corresponding to said tasks could not be determined. These commented situations are contrary to articles 11.003(e), 11.009(c) and 11.027(b) of Act 81-1991.
Contrary to the Act, the Municipality also did not register nor submit to the OCPR the agreement of May 1, 2017.
The audit also notes that, from April 29, 2016 to May 19, 2017 and from December 3, 2019 to June 30, 2021, the Municipality granted loans to the Water Park for $848,538 of capital funds and from the General Fund despite the deficits of the Municipality. The Municipality reflected accumulated deficits, in fiscal years 2014-15, 2015-16, and from 2017-18 to 2019-2015, for $2,684,592, $1,998,885, $1,509,021, $655,841 and $1,672,895, respectively. As of June 30, 2021, the Municipal Enterprise had not reimbursed said loans to the Municipality.
Other findings noted are: lack of oversight on the part of the Commission of Enterprises, Franchises and Municipal Corporations of the Municipal Legislature; absence of regulations to govern the administrative and operational activities of the Water Park, absence of administrative investigations and noncompliance with the notification of accidents to the OCPR, absence of inventories of public documents and absence of performance evaluations of the municipal personnel.
The report covers the period from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2021. And it is available at www.ocpr.gov.pr.
See Audit Report M-22-25.
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.
