The Department of Housing and Urban Development is pushing back on a “false narrative” that it “impeded” an internal investigation into its handling of money to Puerto Rico, ravaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017.
In what should have been a positive story of producing millions of memos in record time, the agency got blasted for “unreasonably” delaying the release of information and emails from top department officials.
“HUD’s top watchdog: Agency impeded probe into Puerto Rico hurricane aid,” said a Washington Post headline this week in a story based on a “management alert” from HUD Inspector General Rae Oliver Davis that criticized the overall slowness inside the department in responding to demands for emails in ongoing probes.
It was dated April 29 and comes as the inspector general is looking into Democratic concerns that HUD has slowed a block grant action plan for Puerto Rico, which has barely tapped the $1.5 billion the department has set aside for it. In total the administration has OK’d $91 billion in aid, more than every state except California receives from Washington annually.
The letter complained that in general, it takes too long, in some cases six months, for HUD to respond to inspector general email demands on all cases.
But it never once mentioned Puerto Rico, and HUD officials said they are puzzled how the media tied that inspector general memo to its quick response on Puerto Rico.
That’s because, said officials speaking on background, the department reacted to the inspector general’s demand for electronic messages on Puerto Rico related to grants in a record 18 days last month, receiving the request on April 8 and making 2.4 million emails available on April 26th. There were so many that they had to put them on a disk instead of emailing the stack to the inspector general.
To speed the process up even more, the agency sought to “screen” the email search of top officials, including Secretary Ben Carson, to narrow down Puerto Rico aid specific memos, but the inspector general rejected that.
The Post said the inspector general memo was “shared” by Hill staffers after they received it during a briefing by the inspector general and HUD officials suspect Democratic critics tied the two issues together to make a negative headline.
“This is fake news that has politics written all over it. The memo had nothing to do with Puerto Rico,” said one top official.
Democrats have portrayed the administration’s efforts in Puerto Rico as inadequate, despite huge amounts of aid being readied. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has even threatened to cut off all aid to every other part of the United States until he’s satisfied Puerto Rico is getting its cut.
Of note, the inspector general “management alert” complaining about delays was written after HUD brass delivered the 2.4 million emails in 18 days, something officials said was further evidence it was unrelated to the Puerto Rico probe.
Said HUD Deputy Chief of Staff Coalter Baker, “While we remain committed to a productive and transparent relationship with the IG, we are confident they will do their own homework and ultimately prove to be better students than those at the Washington Post.”
Agency officials do not deny that it sometimes takes months to respond to the inspector general and they, like officials in other agencies, blame inadequate IT funding and systems, a complaint even the inspector general noted in a 2017 report.
But they said in this case, they performed at record speed — and got whacked for it.
