The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the Municipality of Fajardo. A qualified opinion is issued when the instances of noncompliance, individually or in the aggregate, are significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that from 2017 to 2019, the Municipality did not maintain a perpetual inventory of the materials stored in the warehouse and that the inventory carried out in December 2019 was not reliable. In addition, from 2017 to 2018, the Municipality also did not maintain a physical inventory of the construction materials.
The three-finding audit notes that the materials in the warehouse were dispatched inadequately, since the documentation of the process lacked the corresponding signatures, and requisitions for the construction materials dispatched had not been prepared. These situations prevented maintaining adequate control of the materials and equipment, and fostered the improper use or loss of property.
The Municipality did not provide for examination the 2020 physical inventories of the movable property of five centers. In addition, neither the person in charge who had ceased duties nor the one who assumed the position in 2017 had carried out an inventory of the property under their custody. Other deficiencies are the finding of 19 computers that were not recorded in the property inventory of the programs, the property records were not integrated into the SIMA transaction system (Integrated Solution for Advanced Municipalities), and the information of the 2019 inventory was not reliable.
Contrary to the regulations in force, the Municipality disposed of eight unusable computers, with an inventory value of $8,059, without extracting the electronic information. In addition, two air conditioner units were written off without the certification of unusable property. These situations foster the commission of errors, as well as identity theft and the theft of confidential information.
The Report comments that the Head Start and Early Head Start programs did not have a vacation plan, for which the Municipality had to pay, upon the fiscal closing of the programs in 2017, the excess of the accrued balances of vacation and sick leave for $211,593. Each employee must use the accrued leave during the current fiscal year, since the excess of accrued sick or vacation days cannot be paid with federal funds.
The Municipality's Internal Audit Office (OAI) had issued in 2018 a special report entrusted to it by the mayor to verify the accuracy of the leave balances presented by the then director of the programs. In this regard, the OAI determined that Human Resources could not locate 55 attendance cards since the attendance sheets were discarded, mathematical errors were found in the employees' attendance, and they identified multiple inconsistencies in the calculations of the accrued balances, among others.
On the other hand, the audit comments on certain unfulfilled payment agreements on the part of a former employee of the programs to whom $5,161 had been disbursed in improper salaries for services not rendered. From 2016 to 2017, the former employee had only made two payments of $300.
In 2017 a second agreement was entered into for a moratorium on the first payment plan, which she also did not comply with. This situation was reported to the Office of the Comptroller and to the Secretaries of Justice and the Treasury on February 24, 2020. The report on Fajardo covers the period from July 1, 2016 to December 31, 2020.
See Audit Report M-22-27.
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