The councilors of Lanzarote en Pie-Sí Podemos in the Arrecife City Council have denounced that the budget modification of 6,451,422.58 euros that was taken to the plenary session this Monday to pay suppliers was approved "with two unfavorable reports from the Intervention". In addition, it states that "there were invoices that had not followed the legally established procedure and that, according to the auditor himself, could end up in the Court of Accounts".
For the councilors of this formation, what happened in the plenary session this Monday was "a sample of the lack of transparency, bad faith and anti-democratic attitudes that the PP of Astrid Pérez has established in the capital consistory".
"The government team of Astrid Pérez is continuing with the same bad practices that were maintained in the previous term with Eva de Anta as mayor of Arrecife", they point out in a statement, in which they point out that "at that time, as is happening now, the extrajudicial recognition of credit was used as a usual procedure to deal with the invoices presented in the town hall".
"The extrajudicial recognition of credits is an exceptional procedure that allows to face expenses made without adjusting to the legally established procedure. But this exceptionality cannot become the usual way to face the expenses of the City Council, as it has been done in the previous term", said Leticia Padilla, spokesperson for Lanzarote en Pie-Sí Podemos in the capital consistory.
In this sense, she considers that "political responsibility must go beyond the mere delegation to the Municipal Plenary in decision-making". "The government group must ensure that the corresponding procedures established by law are carried out, in order to avoid that in the future the invoices and expenses of the town hall end up again in extrajudicial credit recognition files, affirm from the municipal group of Lanzarote en Pie-Sí Podemos. "If the invoices are owed, they must be paid, but the City Council cannot take as a usual form a procedure that validates irregular expenses", Leticia Padilla specified.
"Impediment" to the supervisory function of the opposition
The councilors of Lanzarote en Pie-Sí Podemos also affirm that, in the informative commission that was held on the same Monday morning at 8:30 am, they emphasized that "they had not been given access to the technical reports related to the invoices to be paid, something fundamental to exercise the supervisory function of the opposition". "It is shameful that the councilors did not have access to the technical reports on the expenditure of 2,466 invoices until ten minutes before the call for the Plenary", denounces Leti Padilla.
For the confluence of the left, "what happened this Monday has not been transparent or clean", and considers that "the right of access to information of public officials and representatives of the citizens could have been violated". It also affirms that "the situation of uncertainty regarding the call or not of the extraordinary Plenary, to which the whole of the opposition was subjected, explains perfectly what are the ways of the government team led by the PP of Ástrid Pérez and supported by PSOE and Somos-Nueva Canarias".
And it is that, Lanzarote en Pie-Sí Podemos assures that "the call for the Plenary was known at the same time of its celebration, even the call arriving minutes later through official channels".
"To add insult to injury of everything that happened yesterday, the urgent celebration was due to the fact that the mayoress had to be present in the Parliament of the Canary Islands this Tuesday and Wednesday", adds the formation, which considers that "this situation evidences that the hoarding of public positions of the maximum representative of the Arrecife City Council negatively affects the good governance of the consistory and, therefore, in the municipal citizenship".
Uncertainty before the approved procedures
To all that "feeling of legal doubt" about what happened in the plenary, Lanzarote en Pie- Podemos points out that "we must add the unfavorable report of the auditor who affirmed that the budget modification skips the principle of stability of the town hall, increasing the budget by 6.5 million, which produces a budget instability".
"The string of strange procedures does not end there. To the lack of documentation, the negative report of intervention, the invoices that have not followed the procedure and the almost certainty that it could end up in the Court of Accounts, we must add the sudden mutism of the councilor of Finance, Cristina Duque, who to the questions of the spokesperson, Leti Padilla, limited herself to congratulate the intervention technicians and delegate the word, even when it was not appropriate, to the auditor himself. In short, not only did she not answer the questions but she diverted the responsibility to the technical part", denounces the formation
An Economic-Financial Plan "that does not arrive"
Lanzarote en Pie - Sí Podemos affirms also that "the Council of Finance is arriving late with the elaboration of the Economic-Financial Plan". "There are deadlines established by law and the possibility that they are not met, in addition to an Intervention report warning of the consequences of not presenting said Plan", she points out.
"They ask us to vote something that we have not been able to supervise, since we did not have the information in time and in six months they have not been able to prepare the Economic-Financial Plan for the municipality, as the auditor suggested urgently, it has not been their priority since May", Leticia Padilla has criticized.
"We will denounce where we have to denounce this procedure and the payment of expenses without technical reports, nor justifying reports. After all, it is public money, which comes out of the pockets of the citizens of Arrecife", has affirmed the spokesperson of Lanzarote en Pie-Sí Podemos.
