By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

VICE Speaker Eddie B. Calvo, R-Maite, tells the Bureau of Budget and Management Research to withhold the appropriated funds for the 43 government of Guam agencies that have been delinquent in complying with the financial reporting requirement.
“We have an existing law that provides the mechanism to ensure accountability. It provides for automatic deappropriation if an agency fails to adhere to the reporting requirement,” said Calvo, chairman of the finance, taxation and commerce committee.
Under Public Law 28-68, failure to comply with the financial reporting requirement would result in automatic deappropriation of funds equivalent to 5 percent of the appropriations made to the non-compliant agency.
“The law is not selective. If the agencies don’t comply, then there should be remedies. In order for them to get the funding back, they have to come back to the Legislature,” Calvo said in an interview with Variety.
Last week, Calvo wrote to BBMR director Carlos Bordallo, requesting that the Legislature be informed of the measures that the budget office has taken against the delinquent agencies.
Bordallo couldn’t be reached for comment as of press time.
Calvo issued the reminder to Bordallo on the heels of the Office of the Public Auditor’s recent report disclosing that 43 GovGuam agencies failed to submit their fourth quarter financial reports and to post them on their official Web sites.
As of Oct. 31, 2006, only nine agencies fully complied with the requirement, with 20 agencies not submitting their 4th quarter financial reports, and 23 agencies only partially complying with the law, OPA said.
The first three quarters of 2006 posted a high rate of compliance with the reporting requirement. In September of last year, senators amended the law to provide relief to those that have failed to comply during the first three quarters. Such amendment, according to Public Auditor Doris Brooks, may have contributed to the reversal in compliance trend in the last quarter.
“The deappropriation amendment contained in P.L. 28-150 to forgive noncompliance for the first three quarters may have had a negative effect on GovGuam agencies’ reporting in the fourth quarter,” Brooks stated in her report.
“The amendment may have encouraged an increase in the number of entities that did not comply by restoring deappropriated funds to entities that failed to comply with the financial reporting requirements in previous quarters,” Brooks pointed out.
Calvo agreed that the Legislature’s leniency with the agencies that have failed to fulfill the reporting mandate seemed to have sent a wrong signal to agencies. 
Calvo, in his letter to Bordallo, said “the public auditor’s assessment of the situation may be accurate since the positive reporting trend was reversed after the amendment.”
“It wasn’t our intention. We forgave some agencies and allowed for the reinstatement of their funds so that government services would not be interrupted and because we saw some progress in the reporting requirement,” Calvo told Variety.
 “I am concerned about the noncompliance by departments and agencies with the reporting requirements of PL 28-68,” he added.
In her report, Brooks recommended the strict enforcement of the deappropriation provision.