Amazingly enough it happened. It happened in 2007, in the Municipality of Coronel Moldes Salta. The General Auditor of Salta warned when it requested the budget of that year and received "a document called `Ad Referendum Ordinance No. 1 / 07' of resources and expenditure budgets. " The local executive produced it without the participation of the Deliberative Council acting under Article 30 of Act 1349 which provides a mechanism for the enactment of rules that can be used only in "extreme emergency situations, disasters or force majeure."

While the audit noted that "no scenario of extreme urgency was verified" it seems that for the municipality it did exist. They even were in such a hurry to introduce the ordinance to the City Council that they decided to pass the document literally underneath the door. As stated the certificate of notification filed on Jan. 5, "because no one was in that place, although it was a business day, they proceeded to leave a copy of it under the door of the residence indicated".

Who made the notification? It is another question that the auditors raised because "it is not known who the registered signatures on the ballot are" because "there is no clear name, last name, or rank of municipal agents." In fact, although they set their Identity Cards (DNI, for its acronym in Spanish), document numbers of one of the two acting agents were "unreadable."

How would the budget presentation have been right? The provincial Municipalities Act states that before November 30th of each year, the Mayor must submit his project to City Council for discussion and approval. If for some reason "that does not happen before the first of January, it is taken as valid the previous year's budget." As we see, even in situations of force majeure was for an "ordinance ad referendum" by automatically calculating expenses and resources 2006, in this case to extend it.

Not One Right

The auditors also noted that the municipal executive "did not tailor the general account of the exercise in the appointed times" and that "there referred the balance to the provincial audit itself, as current legislation (7103)." These shortcomings we must add that "the accounting records for the year in question were not updated nor complete" because "numerous operations were unregistered and others had inconsistencies."

Better Late Than Never

Meanwhile, the audit of Salta took three years to approve this report, let us remember, the examined the accounts were of 2007. In March of this year, approval was given to the final version of a work that had completed their field tasks in April 2009.

Bonus Track

The Watchdog said that the former mayor of the Municipality of Coronel Moldes "presented clarifications on the comments made on December 28th 2010." What day is that? "The Holy Innocents", the report does not say it’s not necessary.