During the past few months a narrative has taken hold, on both sides of the political spectrum, that Puerto Rico is “using federal disaster relief funds to pay bondholders.”
It has been a little over a year since Hurricane Maria fractured Puerto Rico’s infrastructure and its demographic and economic landscape.
Federal relief and recovery spending in Puerto Rico is mostly being used to contract mainland firms, which suggests that Stafford Act provisions have, up to this point, been sidestepped or ignored.