barriomulas.com - Contracting Blues

The El Vocero newspaper today revealed that the construction company owned by the husband of former PPD President Victoria Muñoz has won over $168.4 million in public contracts in the past 10 years. Victoria is also the daughter of PPD founder and former Governor Luis Muñoz Marin and is still quite active in her party activities. It should be mentioned that 10 years ago the Governor of Puerto Rico was PNP Pedro Rosselló and $18.2 million of the above mentioned contracts were conceded to the Municipality of San Juan which has been administered during the past 8 years by a PNP Mayor. Thus, one must downgrade implications by the press to suggest a sort of PPD favoritism towards Muñoz.

Despite these two foot notes, I can guarantee you that some degree of favoritism has to be present. I'm very sure that if the President of this company was not married to someone with so many political connections that their business would not be as successful. I'm sure if you were to look into his sub-contractors then you would see a similar pattern all the way down the pyramid. Such a practice has been common within both political parties, with the most famous of such cases occurring during the administration of Rosselló. His mass privatizations of public corporations, hospitals, and constant public biddings for his coliseum, railway system, and the "supertubo" water system is riddled with corruption scandals, arrests, and abnormally inflated expenses (some of which even duplicated in cost). Privatization and large public works facilitate corruption. Especially in such a nepotist place like Puerto Rico.

I am quite familiar with bidding boards and even have participated as a member of one. Thus, I can assure you of the relative ease to manipulate bidding processes for someone with bad intentions. And sadly, as long as there exists such large transfers of funds or properties from the public sector to the private sector, this will be a reality. In fact, the process is so contaminated throughout every island agency that I don't even see the need in carrying out such bidding. The process is so easily to manipulate, that all it takes is a single member of the board to call a contractor buddy to let him know the secret government-estimated price of the project.

This is one of the primary reasons why I am so opposed to privatization, the concession of public lands, and most contract jobs. The Department of Public Works of most municipal and state agencies would be up to par with contractors if a handful of high skilled engineers were to be hired. The amount saved on the project would be tremendous, such large acts of corruption would be impeded, and favoritism towards private sector contacts would be minimized.

UPDATE: El Nuevo Dia's 4/29/08 edition covered the recent arrest of public officials involved in contracting fraud.