By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

PUBLIC Auditor Doris Flores Brooks urged senators yesterday to set a spending limit for outgoing village mayors and prohibit the transfer of office resources from one village to another during election periods.
Brooks suggested that such recommendations be incorporated into Bill 39, which proposes the establishment of a transition mechanism for certain elective offices, including the Office of the Public Auditor, the Attorney General’s Office, and mayors’ offices.
“I support Bill 39,” Brooks said at the public hearing on Bill 39 conducted by Speaker Mark Forbes’ committee on general matters. “Having had little transition when I was elected public auditor in November 2000, I am very aware of the need for such coordination.”
In recommending the inclusion of the resources management control for lame duck mayors, Brooks recounted the experience of the incoming mayor of Ordot/Chalan Pago, who began his term with an empty office because his predecessor transferred all office assets to another village.
The discovery prompted Brooks to include a recommendation in her October 2001 audit report for the Legislature to enact legislation “that prohibits the transfer of assets out of mayoral offices during the period between the date of an election in which an incumbent mayor loses and the date on which the incumbent leaves office.”
At yesterday’s public hearing, Brooks also recommended the enactment of a bill “that prevents a losing mayor from spending more than one-fourth of the sum appropriated to that office commencing Oct. 1 of the year of the election of mayors.” 
The spending limit proposal stemmed from audit findings that the mayors of Barrigada, Ordot/Chalan Pago and Inarajan overspent their operational budgets in the first quarter of fiscal year 2001.
Audits found that the Barrigada mayor spent 58 percent of the fiscal year budget; the Ordot/Chalan Pago mayor, 101.3 percent; and the Inarajan mayor, 98.7 percent.
“The outgoing Inarajan mayor also spent 98.7 percent of his annual allocation from the Village Street Fund in the first quarter. The Legislature had to subsequently appropriate additional funds to the newly elected mayor of Inarajan,” Brooks said.
Under Bill 39, introduced by Sen. Frank Ishizaki, R-Yona, outgoing elected officials would not be allowed to just leave office and abandon unfinished business without briefing their successors.
The bill requires the outgoing attorney general, public auditor, mayors and vice mayors to assist their successors by creating a transition committee, providing proper orientation about the duties and functions of the offices, and turning over all office documents.
The bill was purportedly prompted by the predicament at the AGO when outgoing Attorney General Douglas Moylan refused to give his successor, Alicia Limtiaco, access to documents that she had requested while she was preparing to assume office after winning the race for the attorney general.