More money for Puerto Rican pork?

While politicians at suite level talk about potential Puerto Rico bailouts (see my cover story in the current issue of WORLD Magazine), reporters at street level observe the island’s “monstrous and bogged-down government apparatus.” That description does not come from conservative critics but from Latino USA, a weekly radio newsmagazine syndicated by National Public Radio.

Here’s more: “All of the island’s 1,055 schools are administered by a single agency, with a non-existent role of local governments.” Puerto Rico has “a cookie-cutter model for each and every of the island’s 78 city governments. The state establishes each mayor’s pay scale, and even establishes a minimum of nine departments that each mayorship must have. … Mayors are heavily partisan. … Citizens are rarely consulted.”

More: “Occasionally highly political issues are submitted to referendums, but never matters regarding public administration or finance. Bonds and tax proposals are not decided at the polls, but by politicians in San Juan and central bank bureaucrats. Billions of dollars are borrowed each term to divide among legislative pork and big dollar projects that often generate long-term losses or are left incomplete.”

The politics of spending some one else’s money: “Mayors and legislators have traditionally won elections promising large public works such as trains, convention centers and sports complexes. Meanwhile, lampposts lack bulbs, community centers paint, and park swing sets broken. The statewide public utility company is grossly inefficient. … The authority has long been mired by highly paid executives with luxurious bonuses, bureaucracy and political favoritism among its ranks.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, many Democrats want a bailout and many Republicans don’t, but Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) and Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have introduced a semi-bailout bill that would create a federally appointed oversight board to control the island’s finances. With all the talk of Puerto Rico’s desperate situation you’d think that island politicians would be grateful, but no: Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative in Congress, told Mother Jones that the board’s control would be “unwarranted and unacceptable.”

Pierluisi said he would work with congressional leaders to craft the “level of federal control so that it is fair and proportional.” But any degree of federal oversight that Puerto Rico’s current politicians think is “fair” will be a bad deal.