Governor Lou Leon Guerrero had approved several bills that have made it to her office Wednesday. 

All but one, Bill 213-37.

Had it been put into public law, it would have had GovGuam agency and department heads officials be given fines if they failed to provide their audits to the office of public accountability past the deadline.

Her reason? Leon Guerrero stated having agency heads pay “punitive” fines will not have them turn in audit inquiries more efficiently.

Stating, “If the legislature truly wants more efficient performance from our agencies, it should instead work to ensure our agencies have substantial resources and personnel to perform their audit-related tasks.”

Senator Telo Taitague said she authored this bill to put those head officials accountable. She plans to override the veto.

“Those directors who continue to, every year,  put out late audits to the public auditor, providing less documents that he needs to fulfill the obligation at the end of the year for a Government of Guam wide audit,” said Taitague. 

She added, “We've been seeing, tracking that these audits are becoming later and later in the year. Last year, we didn't get the audit until November.” 

Taitague said these audits help the legislature know immediately where funds are being spent.

Taitague said, “This way, we know exactly how much the government is in debt. How much they have in excess revenue. We know all that information. So that would need to create that budget, we can adequately give those agencies the money that they need to run, run it efficiently.”

The Governor also stated that the agencies were not given a chance to testify on the bill but Taitague says otherwise.

“There is a five day notice the open government law requires us to send this out to the public to come and participate in the public hearing everybody and anybody can come and participate,” said Leon Guerrero. 

She added, “Those agencies knew this bill was coming up for a public hearing, why they did not show up, you're gonna have to ask them.” 

Taitague hopes that the senators who voted on the bill will continue to stand firm in their support when she starts the override process. 

The vetoed bill can be viewed below.