The Citizen Commission for the Comprehensive Audit of Public Credit on Thursday raised concerns about House Resolution 63, which aims to delegate control of government debt to the Office of the Comptroller.
“The Comptroller’s Office does not have the resources to conduct a forensic debt audit as needed because it has experience with compliance checks. In addition, the current auditor, Yesmín Valdivieso, has spoken out against and has consistently refused for more than five years to conduct a debt check, ” said José González Taboada, CPA and professor at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in Accounting and member of the Commission.
On the other hand, Nylca Muñoz, attorney and law professor, added that “there is a conflict of interest with the Ministry of Justice to whom the measure assigns technical support tasks in the audit. Several of the bond issues have an advisory opinion from the Attorney General stating their legality and many of these issues have been issued in violation of the Constitution, as indicated in pre-audits and by the Fiscal Control Board itself. For our Commission, controlling debt means assigning responsibility and responding to all the actions and omissions that led us to the worst fiscal crisis on the island and the biggest bankruptcy under the jurisdiction of the US government ”.
“While the measure requires referrals to the Department of Justice in light of the findings of illegal debt, we are concerned that the claim to promote the cancellation of illegal debt through this mechanism will become academic, especially given that while this project to be announced, La Fortaleza and AAFAF support the Fiscal Control Board submitting a new debt adjustment plan to the federal court seeking to restructure, not cancel, the central government debt, ”added González Taboada.
The members of the Commission also wondered that the measure does not contain language classifying all information related to this audit as public, and that there are no mechanisms for transparency and citizen participation in the audit process. Another shortcoming of the draft resolution is the meager budget allocated to monitor 70 years of debt with only 1 million, while the Commission established by law had a budget of 5 million in expenses and the board of directors paid Kobre & Kim 16 million dollars to study only a handful of emissions.
We welcome any proposal for an independent control of the public debt. However, it cannot be a symbolic or meaningless exercise, but rather a comprehensive, independent and transparent audit with broad citizen participation so that it is credible with the people.
The Commission is a not-for-profit organization whose role is to conduct a comprehensive audit of public lending to the people of Puerto Rico. This Commission, of a strictly civil nature, will provide continuity to the work initiated by the Commission for the Comprehensive Audit of Government Appropriations, established by Law 97 of 2015, which was abolished in 2017.