Ending a State’s Fiscal Emergency Manager Preemption, & Who’s on First in Puerto Rico’s Governance?

July 2, 2018

Good Morning! In this morning’s eBlog, we consider what might be the end of the State of Michigan’s much maligned emergency manager program, before returning to assess the question with regard to whether a governor and legislature or a quasi U.S. bankruptcy court are in charge in Puerto Rico.

Exiting from Municipal Bankruptcy. For the first time in nearly two decades, a state-appointed Emergency Manager governs no municipality or school district in Michigan, after the state released Wayne County’s Highland Park School District in Wayne County from receivership under Michigan’s Local Financial Stability and Choice Act of 2012. Indeed, Michigan Treasurer Nick Khouri reports that Michigan municipalities have worked hard to become financially sound, noting: “Today’s achievement is really about the hard work our communities have accomplished to become financially sound…I commend the efforts of our local units to identify problems and bring together the resources needed to help problem-solve challenging financial conditions.” Under the terms of the release, Highland Park School District’s locally elected school board will oversee the contract for Highland Park Public School Academy and the cooperative agreement with the Detroit Public Schools Community District for the continuing education of students. In addition, the board will manage the repayment of long-term debt obligations. The Highland School District has a quasi-chapter 9 plan of debt adjustment in place to address its $7.5 million general fund deficit, with revenues from property taxes imposed on non-homestead property dedicated to finance outstanding debt, as well as an approved two-year budget. According to financial statements, as of the end of last year’s fiscal year, the District had $2.4 million in general obligation bonds outstanding.

The agreement means the school district, which had been under emergency management since January of 2012, and for which the state-appointed emergency manager had established Highland Park Public School Academy to provide educational services to district students while the school district paid off long-term debt obligations—for which, since 2015, said public school academy has been educating students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grades, and for the scholastic years through high school via a cooperative agreement with the Detroit Public Schools Community District, which has been providing educational services to students from ninth through 12th grades.

Nevertheless, the State of Michigan continues to maintain an oversight role in a limited number of Michigan communities: public school districts in Benton Harbor and Pontiac are operating under a consent agreement with the state, and the Muskegon Heights school district is overseen by a receivership-transition advisory board. The critical fiscal recoveries were marked by April’s exit from state oversight by the City of Flint, after seven years, and then, the following month: Detroit.

Conflicted Fiscal Governance. With the beginning of the new fiscal year, Governor Ricardo Rosselló Nevares still assessing fiscal options, as well as his authority to address the $8.7 billion operating budget imposed yesterday by the PROMESA Oversight Board on the U.S. territory–or, as he put it: “We are evaluating the budget certified by the Fiscal Oversight Board on the U.S. territory. Certainly, the impact on the budget of the three branches of government and municipalities will require additional adjustments that will limit our ability to provide services.” Ramon Rosario, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Public Affairs, noted:  “The Governor and his cabinet continue to analyze all possible alternatives to the scenario.”

There was no public reaction to the imposed fiscal preemption of elected authority by House President Carlos Johnny Mendez, nor Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz, respectively, to the budget imposed by the JSF. The Governor indicated, however, that some of the biggest concerns of the Executive are public employees and the payment of the Christmas bonus, as well as the elimination of funds for economic development.

The Board’s proposed budget, interestingly, is greater than that approved by the Legislature; however, it imposes additional cuts of up to $345 million. It does not repeal Law 80-1976, the Law Against Unjustified Dismissal. It does preserve the Christmas bonus for public employees and establish two funds, one of $ 25 million for the University of Puerto Rico, and another of $ 50 million for municipio recovery. PROMESA Board Chair José Carrión, in a written statement, noted: “The course has been drawn, and although it will be a challenge, we cannot afford to deviate. We must all work together.”

Working together would be a challenge—and a question now for Puerto Rico is whether to comply or go to court to preserve, ironically, an approved fiscal budget smaller than that to be imposed by the PROMESA Board: that is, what if the Governor and Legislature were to opt not to implement the unelected PROMESA Board’s proposed budget? One attorney noted: “There would be a confrontation that would generate a controversy in the court, because, then, the Board would have to go to the court and ask it to force the officials to comply with the budget.” Under such a scenario, the unelected fiscal oversight Board would issue a certification of non-compliance, which, were it not to compel the elected government of Puerto Rico to comply, could entail the Board availing itself of the mechanisms in the PROMESA statute preempting Puerto Rico’s governing authority. Independence Party’s Denis Márquez remarked that his “exhortation is not to obey the Fiscal Control Board, but they always tell you that you have to be against the Board, but at the end of the day you look for a reasonable accommodation that always ends up hurting the country.” However, unlike a chapter 9 governance situation, where a federal bankruptcy court assesses a municipality’s plan of debt adjustment, PROMESA allows the Board to establish the budget at its sole discretion. It appears to be virtually a form of colonialism.

As the oversight board had advanced during its approval of the fiscal plan last Friday, the public expenditure scheme contemplates reductions greater than those set in the first version of the document approved by the Legislature: the budgets of some agencies seem to have an increase compared to the current fiscal year, but this is due to the fact that, for the first time, each one was assigned an authorization corresponding to the payment of their employees’ pensions (pay as you go). A spokesperson for the Popular Democratic Party in the House noted: “The vision of the Board is the republican vision, a small government with less participation.” Indeed, the version to be imposed by the Oversight Board contemplates major cuts for the Department of Education, which ended with an allocation for this fiscal year of $2.479 billion, about a 5% cut for what the Legislature had approved, with the deepest cuts coming in payroll and operating expenses, even as the Board added nearly $30 million to “cover services related to the provision of therapies and other services for special education children, and $ 23.8 million for the payment of salary increases to teachers—leading Puerto Rico Senate Education Chair Abel Nazario to note that the PROMESA Board “itself recognizes that these measures must be maintained in the coming years is an achievement that we recognize and appreciate.”

The Board imposed a number of deep cuts, such as the Bureau of the Fire Department, where the Board cut operating expenses of $576,000, as proposed by the Legislature, to $148,000; it slashed just over $1 million for firefighter protection equipment, and cut the police department payroll by $587.1 million, as stipulated in the Legislature’s version, to $ 570.2 million, but the Board retained the proposed $18.8 million for increased police salaries.

Imbalanced Governance? The Board cut funding for the Governor’s office in excess of 10 percent, and funds for the Puerto Rico Legislature by nearly 20 percent; it cut funding for the Puerto Rico Health Department by just under 10 percent.

Can there be Shelter from the Storm? Meanwhile, in a different courtroom, U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin of Massachusetts has ordered that FEMA cannot end its Transitional Sheltering Assistance program until at least midnight tomorrow, granting Puerto Ricans who fled Hurricane Maria’s devastation and have been living in temporary housing on the mainland a very brief reprieve. Christiaan Perez, manager of advocacy and digital strategy for the civil-rights group, LatinoJustice, the national civil-rights group which filed a lawsuit Saturday seeking the restraining order told the court the end of the FEMA assistance would lead to Puerto Rican evacuees being evicted. The temporary restraining order is projected to offer some protection for about 1,744 Puerto Ricans for whom the FEMA transitional assistance was to end Saturday. Judge Sorokin has scheduled a telephone hearing for today.

The outcome will impact many of the families who left Puerto Rico in the wake of the storm for the mainland who have been living in hotels in New York and Florida and those who have been unable to secure affordable housing and are now worried about what happens as FEMA assistance expires—or, as Cynthia Beard, one of the 600 Puerto Rican hurricane survivors living in New York, told NBC News this week: “I don’t know what’s going to happen. The city called me and said there’s a shelter, but there’s no guarantee; they didn’t say everything is going to be OK.” According to Mayor De Blasio’s office, New York City has a program in place to direct transportation from the hotels to the shelters. Once there, families have to find out if they are deemed eligible to register into the city’s shelter system: if accepted, families are assigned to case management and housing assistance services to help them find permanent homes. 

But FEMA has also offered displaced Puerto Ricans the option to return to Puerto Rico, asserting the agency has called more than 1,500 displaced Puerto Ricans to offer to pay for their plane tickets to return to Puerto Rico by yesterday or recommend them ways to look into their respective state’s shelter system. As of June 27, only 145 families had either booked their plane tickets or already returned to Puerto Rico. It appears the majority of displaced Puerto Rican families have opted to remain stateside, even though many do not have a permanent home. The offer came in the wake of four different deadline extensions, during which, under FEMA’s TSA program has housed Puerto Rican hurricane survivors for nearly 9 months. During other disasters, survivors participating in that program were given up to a year and a half—even though officials have said that the program normally lasts 30 days. Nevertheless, FEMA warned it was ending Transitional Sheltering Assistance for survivors of hurricanes Maria, Irma, and Harvey on Saturday, asserting it has spent more than $432 million on survivor lodging as part of the program, and that it has provided rental assistance to more than 25,000 TSA participant families to help them find permanent housing.

Leadership Challenges to Fiscal & Physical Recoveries

08/04/17

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Good Morning! In this a.m.’s blog, we consider the ongoing fiscal and physical recovery of Flint, Michigan—as well as the fiscal recoveries of Pontiac and Lincoln Park, and we look at the special fiscal challenge to Puerto Rico’s debts.

In Like Flint. EPA has okayed the State of Michigan’s plans to forgive $20.7 million in past water infrastructure loans owed by the City of Flint, relying on federal legislation enacted at the end of last year to provide states the Safe Drinking Water Revolving Loan program to forgive past loans owed to a state. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt noted: “Forgiving Flint’s past debt will better protect public health and reduce the costs associated with maintaining the city’s water system over time…Forgiving the city’s debt will ensure that Flint will not need to resume payments on the loan, allowing progress toward updating Flint’s water system to continue.” In response, Mayor Karen Weaver stated: “We appreciate the EPA’s continued assistance as we work to recover from the water crisis: We have come a long way, but there is still much more work that needs to be done. With help and support like this from federal, state as well as local entities, Flint will indeed bounce back.”

Emerging from State Fiscal Oversight. The Michigan Treasury Department reports that the Michigan municipalities of Pontiac and Lincoln Park have both sufficiently improved their fiscal conditions to warrant release from eight long years of state oversight: they may return to local control in the wake of Michigan Treasurer Nick Khouri’s announcement that the Pontiac and Lincoln Park Receivership Transition Advisory Boards would be dissolved and effective immediately, thereby returning full fiscal authority to the elected leaders of the respective municipalities. The Michigan Receivership Transition Advisory Boards, which have been monitoring the cities’ finances since the departure of emergency managers, have been dissolved—clearing the way for locally elected officials to resume complete control of the respective municipal governments again, with Lincoln Park now making regular contributions to its pension fund, with the Detroit suburb emerging from state oversight which commenced in 2014. Nearby Pontiac had sought a state financial review a decade ago—operating in the wake thereof under a consent agreement and an emergency manager. The Treasury today reports the municipality has a general fund balance of $14 million. Thus, the two municipalities join Wayne County, Benton Harbor, Highland Park, and four other municipalities in exiting such fiscal oversight; however, nine municipalities and school districts remain under some sort of state oversight, although the state has imposed an emergency manager only in Highland Park Schools. In making the announcement, Gov. Rick Snyder reported: “Under the guidance of the Receivership Transition Advisory Boards, both Lincoln Park and Pontiac have made significant progress to right their finances and build solid, fiscal foundations for their communities: This is a great achievement for the cities.”

In the case of Pontiac, the city’s debt long-term debt dropped nearly 80% under state oversight, from over $45 million to about $8.2 million since 2009, according to the Michigan Treasury Department, culminating at FY2016 year-end with a general fund balance of $14 million. At the same time, a blight remediation program in the city has succeeded in razing nearly 680 blighted residential properties since 2012, in no small part through CDBG assistance. Secretary Khouri noted: “Pontiac has seen great economic progress and opportunity since the lost decade.” The city of Lincoln Park cut its long term debt from more than $1 million in 2014 when it entered state oversight to $260,707. At the end of fiscal-year 2016, Lincoln Park ended with a general fund balance of $24.4 million.  The city entered state controlled emergency management in February 2014 and began its transition to local control in December 2015. “Today marks an important achievement for Lincoln Park residents, the city and all who have contributed to moving the city back to a path of fiscal stability,” Khouri said. Lincoln Park, with a population of close to 40,000, where Brad Coulter, who has served as the Emergency Manager, noted that the Hispanic and Latino population make up about 15% of Lincoln Park residents, describing the diversity as a “growing and an important part of the city” which as really helped “to stabilize the city.”

Puerto Rican Debt. The Fiscal Supervision Board in the U.S. territory wants to initiate a discussion into Puerto Rico’s debt—and how that debt has weighed on the island’s fiscal crisis—making clear in issuing a statement that its investigation will include an analysis of the fiscal crisis and its taxpayers, and a review of Puerto Rico’s debt and issuance, including disclosure and sales practices, vowing to carry out its investigation consistent with the authority granted under PROMESA. It is unclear how that report will mesh with the provision of PROMESA, §411, which already provides for such an investigation, directing the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to provide a report on the debt of Puerto Rico no later than one year after the approval of PROMESA (a deadline already passed: GAO notes the report is expected by the end of this year.). The fiscal kerfuffle comes as the PROMESA Oversight Board meets today to discuss—and mayhap render a decision with regard to furloughs and an elimination of the Christmas bonus as part of a fiscal oversight effort to address an expected cash shortfall this Fall, after Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, at the end of last month, vowed he would go to court to block any efforts by the PROMESA Board to force furloughs, apprehensive such an action would fiscally backfire by causing a half a billion contraction in Puerto Rico’s economy.

Thus, we might be at an OK Corral showdown: PROMESA Board Chair José Carrión III has warned that if the Board were to mandate furloughs and the Governor were to object, the board would sue. As proposed by the PROMESA Board, Puerto Rican government workers are to be furloughed four days a month, unless they work in an excepted class of employees: for instance, teachers and frontline personnel who worked for 24-hour staffed institutions would only be furloughed two days a month, law enforcement personnel not at all—all part of the Board’s fiscal blueprint to save the government $35 million to $40 million monthly.  However, as the ever insightful Municipal Market Advisors managing partner Matt Fabian warns, it appears “inevitable” that furloughs and layoffs would hurt the economy in the medium term—or, as he wrote: “To the extent employee reductions create a protest environment on the island, it may make the Board’s work more difficult going forward, but this is the challenge of downsizing an over-large, mismanaged government.” At the same time, Joseph Rosenblum, the Director of municipal credit research at AllianceBernstein, added: “It would be easier to comment about the situation in Puerto Rico if potential investors had more details on their cash position on a regular basis…And it would also be helpful if the Oversight Board was more transparent about how it arrived at its spending estimates in the fiscal plan.”