How Much Aid Money Has Actually Gone To Puerto Rico?
Biden to Gratuitous Upward Billions in Delayed Puerto Rico Storm Aid
The administration plans to release $1.three billion that was meant to help Puerto Rico rebuild later Hurricane Maria in 2017, and will remove restrictions on another $four.9 billion.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said information technology would release $1.three billion in aid that Puerto Rico tin use to protect confronting future climate disasters, and is starting to remove some restrictions put in place by the Trump administration on spending that was to help the island after Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Assistants officials, describing the move as a first footstep toward addressing racial inequality through policies designed to address climatic change, said they planned to ease the limits that the Trump administration placed on another $four.9 billion in assistance on the forenoon of Jan. 20, a few hours before the former president left office.
Puerto Rico's reconstruction after Maria, which devastated the isle more than three years ago, has been far slower than the recovery in other parts of the country, such as Texas and Florida, that were besides struck past major disasters that year. That is partly considering the Department of Housing and Urban Development had placed restrictions on Puerto Rico's aid funds that didn't utilize to other recipients, according to current and one-time officials and policy experts.
"That slow pace of disbursement has dampened Puerto Rico's recovery," said Rosanna Torres, Washington director for the Centre for a New Economy, a Puerto Rican think tank.
The money is part of $20 billion that Congress provided HUD afterward Maria for recovery and for protection confronting futurity storms in Puerto Rico. According to federal information, only $138 million, or about 0.vii percent, has been spent, a far lower rate than for funding that Congress provided HUD to help Texas, Florida and other parts of the United states to rebuild afterward similar disasters.
That discrepancy reflects the insistence past senior Trump officials that Puerto Rico provide HUD with more information and documentation than state governments about its spending plans before money would be released, according to Stan Gimont, who was HUD's deputy assistant secretary for grant programs at the time.
"Information technology seemed like information technology was excessive," said Mr. Gimont, who left HUD in 2019 and is now a senior adviser for community recovery at Hagerty Consulting. "It made it a really onerous process."
The Trump administration's reluctance to provide funds to Puerto Rico reflected a number of motivations, according to Mr. Gimont and two other onetime senior administration officials, who asked non to be identified discussing the matter because they worried doing so would upset their current or future employers.
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I was the business organization that the isle would struggle to properly spend such a huge amount of coin, creating the possibility that some of it would exist misspent. That concern was overblown, Puerto Rican officials say.
Kenneth McClintock, a quondam Puerto Rico secretary of state and Senate president, said that the island had an admittedly slow and bureaucratic process to approve structure projects. But the Trump assistants likewise tagged Puerto Rico as more decadent than other jurisdictions and delayed the disbursement of federal funds to begin with, he said.
"Trump believed that Puerto Rico was the most corrupt place in the nation," he said. "We do take abuse," Mr. McClintock said, but he said that he considered it no worse than other parts of the country.
Through a spokesman, Ben Carson, the HUD secretary under President Donald J. Trump, declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump didn't answer to a request for comment.
Concerns nigh corruption or mismanagement led to a worse problem, former Trump officials said: Three and a half years after Maria, much of the damage has yet to exist repaired.
"The coin was appropriated to promote recovery," Mr. Gimont said. "If you lot don't spend the money, yous're certain not promoting the recovery."
Mr. Biden had raised the slow release of Puerto Rico disaster money as an effect during his presidential campaign and had pledged to opposite it.
Trump officials complicated the Biden team's ability to brand good on that pledge. On the morning time of January. 20, Inauguration Day, Brian Montgomery, who was nearly to go out his mail service as HUD'south deputy secretary, approved a asking from Puerto Rico to gain access to $iv.9 billion to assist harden the isle against future storms.
Simply in approving that request, Mr. Montgomery added requirements that made it harder for Puerto Rico to spend the money, which would have forced the island to go through a separate approval process for each individual projection funded by those dollars. On Monday, HUD reversed the decision, telling Puerto Rico to employ once again for the $4.nine billion then that HUD tin can approve its application without the restrictions.
William RodrÃguez, the secretary of the Puerto Rico Housing Department, said in an interview on Tuesday that officials await the Biden administration to set the same aid terms for the island as the federal authorities has placed on other states and jurisdictions, as opposed to the stricter ones fix past the Trump administration.
"There was discrimination against Puerto Rico," he said of HUD under Mr. Trump. Mr. RodrÃguez said he has now been told to expect a finalized deal in a matter of weeks. "We are very optimistic," he said. "Puerto Rico has a great need, and for iii years has non been able to recover as information technology could accept."
In an interview, Mr. Montgomery, the former deputy secretarial assistant of HUD, said the weather condition that the agency imposed on Puerto Rico were justified by the fact that the isle rarely suffers from large-scale disasters and and so lacked the experience handling big amounts of federal disaster help that some states have.
Mr. Montgomery also said that the conditions imposed in the Jan. 20 letter to Puerto Rico weren't intended to necktie the easily of the Biden administration. He said the goal was to make more funding bachelor to Puerto Rico, under atmospheric condition that he thought were appropriate to safeguard public money.
"The secretary and I felt very strongly to go this money out on our watch, considering we had been working very closely with Puerto Rico on it," Mr. Montgomery said.
A spokesman for HUD, Michael Burns, called the bureau's moves on Monday an attempt to "reset" its relationship with Puerto Rico. "The activity we are taking today volition assist the island build resilience to time to come storms and floods," he said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/climate/puerto-rico-maria-federal-aid.html
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