Feds free $8B to help Puerto Rico
Trump administration officials announced Wednesday that they’re finally releasing more than $8 billion in disaster aid to Puerto Rico after drawing intense ire from congressional Democrats over a mysterious, months-long freeze on the sorely needed cash.
Speaking at an unrelated event in East Harlem, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said his agency was moving to give Puerto Rico $8.2 billion in congressionally approved hurricane readiness grants that were supposed to have been noticed by September.
Carson said HUD had held up the cash over unspecified concerns of “corruption,” but that “all the various people who have to be satisfied have now been satisfied.”
“The positive is that with the amount of money that’s going to Puerto Rico, and now having the appropriate controls in, I think there’s a possibility that it can become the jewel of the Caribbean,” Carson told reporters. “They can do amazing things and I’m really looking forward to tremendous development in Puerto Rico.”
Carson’s announcement came just six days after a senior HUD official told the Daily News that the aid wouldn’t be released until concerns about “financial mismanagement, corruption and other abuses” were resolved, even though back-to-back earthquakes had just rocked Puerto Rico.
HUD has not elaborated on the nature of the alleged corruption concerns, and Carson did not explain how they have now apparently been quelled.
But he pushed back against the suggestion that politics played a role in the aid release.
“It has nothing to do with that,” Carson said after being asked if the change of heart was influenced by Gov. Cuomo’s recent pledge to deploy state resources to help the island’s residents in light of the federal inaction. “There was a long history of corruption.”
Carson also denied allegations from Democrats that the White House ordered the aid withheld.
“No one ever came to me from the administration and said hold up funds,” he said.
Democrats didn’t buy Carson’s explanations.
On a visit to one of the areas of Puerto Rico ravaged by this month’s quakes, Cuomo said the Trump administration keeps giving the island the short end of the stick.
“They have released the money to other states. Why is Puerto Rico treated differently?” the governor told reporters, referring to natural disasters in Texas and Florida.
Brooklyn-Queens Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who grew up in Puerto Rico, said the aid freeze appears to have been prompted by President Trump’s “disdain for the people of Puerto Rico.”
“We cannot afford for the Trump administration to repeat the mistakes of Maria, which cost thousands of our fellow citizens their lives,” Velazquez said in a statement, referring to the devastating 2017 hurricane. “Our government must do better.”
Dozens of Democrats threatened to take legal action against the Trump administration on Tuesday if it didn’t explain the aid hold, considering Puerto Rico’s inspector general recently found there was not a legitimate reason to block the money.