By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

THE autonomy of the Office of the Public Auditor would further expand under a bill that would remove the agency from the cloak of the Department of Administration.
Introduced by Sen. Judith Guthertz, D-Mangilao, Bill 96 would authorize the public auditor to hire professionals and set their salary rates outside of the 1991 Hay Study, the uniform pay-scale setting method adopted by DOA.
Like the rest of the government agencies, the hiring of personnel for OPA, the staffing pattern, the classification of employees and the salary structure are being determined by DOA.
OPA was established in 1992 and the public auditor became an elected position in 2001.
“The duties and mandates of OPA require it to employ highly trained and experienced professional staff,” Bill 96 states.
OPA is staffed with certified public accountants, internal auditors, fraud examiners, financial managers, lawyers and investigators.
“Effectively meeting the numerous mandates within the elected term of the public auditor requires that the employees adhere to stringent impartiality and confidentiality standards. Testing is unsuitable and impracticable to meet these requirements for elected officials,” the bill says.
The bill’s proponent noted the difficulty in recruiting and retaining a sufficient number of technical and professional employees because the salary levels are not competitive enough.
The bill would authorize the office to apply a salary structure “deemed appropriate by the public auditor.”