The Secretary of Government of , , president of , appointed to a position of trust in the team of (Republicans) a former mayor from the interior of São Paulo considered a dirty record by the (Court of Auditors of the Union), prevented from contesting elections until 2030, and dismissed him 18 days later, after the Sheet question his appointment.
Décio Ventura, former mayor of Ilha Comprida, in Vale do Ribeira, had been appointed to head the regional Registration division at the Government Secretariat, with the role of articulating the relationship between the region’s city halls and the Tarcísio administration, negotiating agreements and passing on amendments to the municipalities.
The former mayor has a history of problems with external control bodies over public accounts. He was elected mayor of Ilha Comprida in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, running on both occasions for the PSDB. During this period, the TCE (State Audit Court) recommended the disapproval of the accounts for 2010, 2013 and 2014.
Ventura had his dismissal published in the Official Gazette this Tuesday (4), one day after the Sheet question the Tarcísio management about the appointment. He told the reporter that he asked to be fired because he didn’t want to “create problems for anyone” — in the official text there was no mention of leaving “on request”, as is common in these cases.
In Ilha Comprida, the city’s City Council initially chose not to reject the accounts in the first two years of the TCE’s questions, but in 2017, a vote decided to follow the court’s recommendation and reject the 2014 accounts — making him ineligible for eight years.
Before becoming mayor, Ventura directed the Development Agency of the Municipalities of the Vale do Ribeira/Guaraqueçaba Mesoregion, a non-profit entity that received public resources to finance employment generation projects, but which ended up being dissolved after a decision by the TCU.
Ventura is cited in four different processes on the Irregular Accounts portal of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) due to transfers of resources that the entity received without reporting, from 2004 to 2007.
The TSE listing is based on four TCU rulings, which determined the rejection of the agency’s accountability, resulting from transfers received from the federal government. The first of them is from 2019. Two are from 2021 and one is from 2022.
In the case of the most recent decision, which became final (when resources are exhausted) on July 13, 2022, the agency had received the equivalent of R$293,000 (in values adjusted for inflation) from the Ministry of Regional Development for development actions in the region, but did not report on how it used the money, according to the TCU.
On Monday, when the Sheet questioned the Tarcísio administration about the appointment, Ventura himself responded, in a note, saying that he “has extensive experience in public administration” and that, in total, he was mayor of Ilha Comprida four times, which would demonstrate that “his mandates were recognized as absolutely positive”.
In the message, when commenting on the rejected bills, he said that the decision “observed exclusively political, and not technical, criteria, given that most of the members of the City Council at the time decided to ally themselves with the opposing local political current”, without citing the TCE’s opinions that recommended rejection.
Regarding the TCU’s decisions, Ventura stated that “the aforementioned decisions are being discussed in legal proceedings” and that “Mr. Décio was not the one who committed any irregularity”.
The Tarcísio government sent a note saying that “the choice of Décio José Ventura for the position was due to his administrative experience”. The appointment, according to management, “met the requirements established by legislation”. The position also mentioned that there were “appeals in progress” regarding the processes at the TCU. Even so, Ventura ended up being dismissed from the government.
