The Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion of the fiscal operations of the Municipality of Salinas. A qualified opinion is issued when the instances of noncompliance, individually or in the aggregate, are significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that the Salinas Tourism Office collected $31,803 with unofficial receipts and without having an appointment of auxiliary collector. In addition, the employees did not issue receipts for $2,083 for the rental of kayaks, sales of items and trolley routes.
The six-finding audit notes that the Finance collector did not request the unofficial receipts to verify the correctness of the reconciliation of the collected money prepared by the tourism director. In addition, collections for $37,514 were identified, delivered to Finance up to a year after the collection. These situations foster the commission of errors, irregularities or the improper use and loss of the municipal funds.
The Report lists other deficiencies contrary to Ordinance 24 of 2016 on the rental of tourist goods and services, such as: the collection for the rental of items not included in the Ordinance and collections at prices different from those established by the document. The Ordinance itself has no provisions related to the administration or the procedures for the request and rental of goods and services.
The auditors did not find for examination the reservation forms, releases of liability, and receipts issued. These situations are attributed to the lack of supervision of the operations of Tourism, lack of space to safeguard the documents and the loss of documents due to Hurricane María.
The Bidding Board of the Municipality awarded demolition, removal and disposal works of structures of sports facilities to a bidder whose quote did not include the costs of processing the permits. When adding this cost, the award of the works was not made to the best bidder, whose quote was $3,250 more economical. This situation could foster favoritism and detract from the reliability of the process. In addition, the Municipality of Salinas did not submit the contract to the Contract Registry of the Office of the Comptroller (OCPR) and no evidence was found of the request for permits from the Permit Management Office.
As of February 10, 2021, the contracting of insurance and bonds had not been regulated, to establish the procedures for claims, acquire specialized services of brokers and establish the form of payment. This situation was corrected through Ordinance 2 of 2021.
The auditors found that the contracts from 2018 to 2020 were submitted to the Office of the Comptroller up to nine months after being granted. In addition, contrary to current law, the Municipality made payments for $589,864 for heavy equipment without having registered the contracts beforehand.
The Report also reveals instances of noncompliance and delays of up to seven months for the submission of the Monthly Report of Payrolls and Positions, the Annual Certification of Contract Registries and the Negative Certification on the Status of Privatizations, to the OCPR and to other entities.
The audit recommends that the director of the Office of Management and Budget ensure that the Municipality of Salinas complies with the Corrective Action Plan established by the Office of the Comptroller.
The General Fund budget of the Municipality was $10,229,542 in fiscal year 2019, $9,869,020 in 2020, and $9,657,519 in 2021. The audited financial statements reflected accumulated surpluses in the General Fund of $402,763 in fiscal year 2019, $1,489,191 in 2020 and $1,269,106 in 2021.
This first report on Salinas covers the period from July 1, 2018 to December 31, 2020.
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See Audit Report OC-24-23.
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
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