Puerto Rico governor: ‘Every penny’ of long-awaited Hurricane Maria relief funds will be used
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said Tuesday that his government will “use every penny” of billions in federal hurricane relief funds after their release was approved, pushing back against corruption concerns that led the Trump administration to hold onto the emergency aid for years.
The Biden administration announced Monday it was moving forward with plans to disburse $1.3 billion in disaster relief from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the U.S. territory. The federal agency also began to loosen restrictions on an additional $4.9 billion approved right before former President Donald Trump left office.
It’s the first such announcement from Biden, who promised in his campaign to deliver the long-awaited recovery funds for Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria, which killed thousands and demolished critical infrastructure in 2017.
“We will use every penny correctly and adequately to improve our infrastructure and make it more resilient,” Pierluisi said in remarks provided to the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald.
The total $6.2 billion is set to be distributed through a HUD disaster relief program called the Community Development Block Grant Mitigation Program. The funds are designed to help the island mitigate future risks and build resiliency to storms and climate change.
Despite the $90 billion in damage Hurricane Maria wrought in Puerto Rico, federal agencies under the Trump administration established strict additional oversight and placed restrictions on already-approved disaster funding that don’t apply to other areas hit by disaster. The White House alluded to Puerto Rico’s “long history of financial mismanagement and corruption” in a 2019 press release. Puerto Rican officials have said the absence of the approved money has stalled recovery efforts.
The new president has promised to accelerate access to reconstruction funding, with one HUD official describing the release of funds as “resetting the relationship” between Puerto Puerto and Washington.
Puerto Rico Housing Secretary William Rodríguez said that the pace of bureaucracy has already quickened under the Biden administration.
“In several weeks we will be receiving the grant agreement,” he said. “A very big difference from what had happened previously, where the grant agreement of the action plan was received nine months after the notification.”
HUD has only paid out around $138.5 million, less than 1% of the almost $20 billion Congress allocated for Hurricane María relief through the agency, according to late January figures from the Central Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3), which oversees federally funded reconstruction projects in Puerto Rico.
The federal agency’s handling of the Maria relief funds under the Trump administration was rife with controversy and criticism. HUD restrictions for Puerto Rico to access the funding prompted outrage on the island and in the diaspora. In January 2020, the Department appointed an internal federal monitor to oversee HUD emergency funds for the island.
Like Trump, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson expressed “serious concerns” over corruption and mishandling of funds as a reason for the safeguards.
“Since Puerto Rico has a history of fiscal malfeasance, we are putting additional financial controls in place to ensure this disaster recovery money is spent properly,” the former top HUD official said in a March 2019 statement announcing fiscal controls over Maria relief.
A HUD official said the department will turn next to freeing up $1.9 billion in funding to help Puerto Rico upgrade its electrical grid in collaboration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, though no timeline has been established on how soon that might happen.
The next step, per Puerto Rico’s Department of Housing, is to draft and finalize an agreement with HUD that will facilitate access to the funds.
Of the roughly $66 billion in total aid Congress approved for Puerto Rico after the 2017 storm, only about $17.3 billion — less than a third of the total amount — has been distributed to the American territory.
On the island, officials expressed hope that long-awaited recovery projects will finally get off the ground.
“We are optimistic that the terms and conditions will be favorable for Puerto Rico and will be the same as those that have been granted to other jurisdictions in the United States,” Rodríguez said.
This story was originally published February 1, 2021 at 10:55 PM.