Building Back Locally Supporting Puerto Rico’s Municipalities in Post-Hurricane Reconstruction SHELLY CULBERTSON, JOHN BORDEAUX, ITALO A. GUTIERREZ, ANDREW LAULAND, KRISTIN J. LEUSCHNER, BLAS NUÑEZ-NETO, LISA SAUM-MANNING HS AC HOMELAND SECURITY OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS CENTER An FFRDC operated by the RAND Corporation under contract with DHS rr3041_cover_v13.indd 1,3 9/4/20 10:41 AM Published in 2020 Preface On August 8, 2018, the government of Puerto Rico submitted to Congress a report entitled Transformation and Innovation in the Wake of Devastation: An Economic and Disaster Recovery Plan for Puerto Rico (henceforth called the Recovery Plan). This plan fulfilled the mandate in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. Under contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) provided substantial support in developing this plan by soliciting and integrating inputs from a wide variety of stakeholders, contributing analysis where needed, and “holding the pen” to write the draft plan. The plan included an overview of damage and needs, courses of action (COAs) to meet those needs, costs of the COAs, and potential funding mechanisms for those costs. In September 2018, FEMA requested that HSOAC conduct several follow-on analyses to better target the efforts to implement the Recovery Plan, including an assessment of how FEMA can support the capacity of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities to fulfill their responsibilities in reconstruction projects. This report documents the results of that analysis, which assessed how municipal governments participate in reconstruction projects, aimed to establish a baseline for their current reconstruction capacity, and evaluated how postdisaster reconstruction has been carried out in contexts similar to Puerto Rico. The result of this four-month effort was to identify concrete ways that FEMA and the government of Puerto Rico could support Puerto Rico’s municipalities in fulfilling their substantial roles in reconstruction. This report will likely also be of interest to other stakeholders engaged in recovery activities in Puerto Rico, including the government of Puerto Rico, municipal governments, local agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. Furthermore, this body of material contributes to the larger literature about reconstruction, disaster recovery, and resilience and may be of interest to other communities and local governments planning for or recovering from similar disasters. This research was sponsored by FEMA and conducted within HSOAC, a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC). More information about HSOAC’s contribution to planning for recovery in Puerto Rico, along with links to other reports being published as part of this series, can be found at www.rand.org/hsoac/puerto-rico-recovery. About the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Section 305 of Public Law 107-296, as codified at 6 U.S.C. § 185), authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting through the Under Secretary for Science and Technology, to establish one or more FFRDCs to provide independent analysis of homeland security issues. The RAND Corporation operates HSOAC as an FFRDC for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under contract HSHQDC-16-D-00007. iii The HSOAC FFRDC provides the government with independent and objective analyses and advice in core areas important to the department in support of policy development, decisionmaking, alternative approaches, and new ideas on issues of significance. The HSOAC FFRDC also works with and supports other federal, state, local, tribal, and public- and private- sector organizations that make up the homeland security enterprise. The HSOAC FFRDC’s research is undertaken by mutual consent with DHS and is organized as a set of discrete tasks. This report presents the results of research and analysis conducted under Task Order 70FBR218F00000032, “Puerto Rico Economic and Disaster Recovery Plan: Integration and Analytic Support.” The results presented in this report do not necessarily reflect official DHS opinion or policy. For more information on HSOAC, see www.rand.org/hsoac. For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR3041. iv Contents Preface ............................................................................................................................................ iii Figures........................................................................................................................................... vii Tables ........................................................................................................................................... viii Summary ........................................................................................................................................ ix Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ xix Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................ xx Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Motivation for This Study ........................................................................................................... 1 Focus of This Study .................................................................................................................... 2 Challenges Facing Puerto Rico’s Municipalities ........................................................................ 3 The Importance of Local Government Capacity in Postdisaster Reconstruction ....................... 4 Methods ...................................................................................................................................... 6 Limitations of This Study ........................................................................................................... 9 Organization of This Document ............................................................................................... 10 Chapter 2. Framework for Assessing Municipal Responsibilities ................................................ 11 The Reconstruction Life Cycle ................................................................................................. 11 Municipal Reconstruction Capacity Assessment Framework for Puerto Rico ......................... 14 Municipal Relative Capacity Indexes ....................................................................................... 15 Chapter Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 3. Relative Municipal Capacities for Reconstruction in Puerto Rico ............................. 29 Municipalities’ Relative Capacities Overall ............................................................................. 29 Relationship of Capacity to Municipality Size ......................................................................... 31 Relationship of Capacity to Severity of Hurricane Damage ..................................................... 31 Chapter Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 4. General Municipal Reconstruction Challenges ........................................................... 34 Strategy ..................................................................................................................................... 35 Management .............................................................................................................................. 39 Operations ................................................................................................................................. 43 Finance and Administration ...................................................................................................... 47 Chapter Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter 5. Lessons Learned from Other U.S. State and Local Governments in Postdisaster Reconstruction ........................................................................................................................ 53 Strategy ..................................................................................................................................... 53 Management .............................................................................................................................. 54 Operations ................................................................................................................................. 59 v Finance and Administration ...................................................................................................... 64 Chapter Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter 6. Recommendations for Supporting Municipal Capacity for Reconstruction in Puerto Rico .............................................................................................................................. 66 Strategy ....................................................................................................................................