By Issel M Masses | Executive Director
In September of 2017, Hurricanes Irma and María plowed through the island of Puerto Rico, causing massive infrastructural damages and killing over 4,000 citizens. The unprecedented catastrophe led then President Trump to issue a Major Disaster Declaration and authorize federal funding for emergency works for all 78 municipalities in the island.
Most of the federal recovery funds are exclusively managed by two local agencies: the Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3) and the Puerto Rico Department of Housing (PRDOH). The former entity has been assigned more than 38 billion dollars under the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act and its FEMA program, while the latter is expected to receive over 20 billion dollars through the federal Department of Housing's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG-DR). These agencies are also in charge of managing recovery funds of other disasters, such as the current pandemic.
More than three years after the storms' passing, and despite the allocation of federal recovery funds, Puerto Ricans are yet to witness and benefit from the reconstruction works that are so urgently needed. With ~473 million dollars of FEMA funds having been spent on permanent works, and with PRDOH having completed a mere 146 home repairs since September of 2017, there is no doubt that local government spending for such post-disaster recovery projects has suffered setbacks.
For this reason, alongside your support, and that of Open Contracting Partnership, Contratos En Ley has been conducting research, to investigate and help correct the concerning delays in the development of PR's public recovery projects, whose inefficiencies can be directly mapped to the public procurement process. To do so, we are analyzing the planning, tendering and award related data of PRDOH's CDBG-DR procurements so as to identify these contracting processes' shortcomings and propose solutions to their deficiencies.
During the last three months, we have been working through Contratos En Ley to:
- Assess govertment’s transparency in the use of recovery funds
- Evaluate contracting processes for recovery, to assess delays and risks of corruption
- Determine if local businesses have opportunities to win recovery contracts
- Evaluate impact and identify solutions to existing weaknesses
Up next, we will be finalizing an official assessment to be published during the next quarter in the Contratos En Ley platform, will conduct educational events to share insights we have gathered and their implications, and promote solutions that ensure recovery funds are used to build back better.
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