Lack of trust and credibility prompts a proposal

The White House is gearing up to appoint a ‘recovery czar’ for Puerto Rico, which would mean direct intervention from the President, while also divesting the island’s political leadership of control over the disbursement of some of the federal funds assigned for the recovery after Hurricanes Irma and María.

The model to be used in Puerto Rico was previously employed by the federal government to manage the reconstruction of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and New York after Sandy.

The information accessed by NotiCel suggests that this appointment will be done via executive order, which rules out appointing the Fiscal Control Board (FCB) to said role, since the order will depend solely on the President. Besides, changing the federal PROMESA act -which enabled and imposed the FCB in Puerto Rico- would mean going through a process of legislative debate and approval. While the Board will continue to be focused on restructuring the debt, the ‘czar’ will focus on developing the processes for the Government of Puerto Rico to, at some point, assume the responsibility of receiving and distributing the funds with absolute transparency and accountability.

This effort would have bipartisan support, given that lawmakers from both parties have requested some sort of mechanism to help accelerate the disbursement of funds for the recovery of the island, in view of the concerns shared by both political sectors in the United States regarding the local government’s ability to manage the money in a transparent and fair manner.

Although in a statement released on Thursday Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón claimed credit for proposing a ‘federal official in charge of coordinating the reconstruction efforts,’ the truth is that this plan has already been in discussions for a while among different sectors in the federal capital and it’s already at the draft review stage. Last Thursday, González met with Trump’s Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.

Just as it happened with Katrina, the executive order would dictate that the President shall appoint a Coordinator of Federal Support for the Recovery and Rebuilding of Puerto Rico, who would be set up within the Homeland Security Department structure and would answer to the Secretary of said Department. The official would serve for at least three years and would be the President’s ‘point of contact’ for all issues regarding the reconstruction of Puerto Rico. With this appointment, the Coordinator would also be granted the power to align all federal executive resources on the subject of Puerto Rico, including authority over other Executive agencies not under the purview of Homeland Security.

This official will also establish the protocols, procedures, and structures that will regulate the funds, and the Government of Puerto Rico and the local private sector would be required to follow these guidelines ‘in order to receive federal funds’.

The Coordinator will be expected to focus on the $28 billion dollars are assigned to Puerto Rico under the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG – DR) program from the Department of Housing and Development (HUD), an entity that just last week announced the first fund release of $1.5 billion dollars. There is an additional allocation of $23.4 billion.