Public private partnerships for development is nothing new in Puerto Rico, but Gov. Fortuño’s dogmatic focus on this form of financing as the keystone for island economic activity is an invitation to “chaos,” former Gov. Acevedo Vilá says in his new book “That’s how it was. Now what?”

“[PPP] legislation approved in 2009 takes away from government agencies the power and capacity to decide when partnership is convenient. Under this legislation, a super agency with a super board of directors — under the leadership of the Government Development Bank — will be the ones who decide what will be privatized and, worse yet, under what conditions these contracts will be granted. This is an invitation to chaos because it takes agencies that really have the ministerial responsibility of providing services to citizens out of the equation,” Acevedo Vilá says in his book.

A similar super board headed Superaqueduct project bidding and the subsequent high-level corruption that lead to the convictions of former Gov. Pedro Rosselló’s former campaign manager René Vázquez Botet and former New Progressive Party general secretary Marcos Morell Corrada of soliciting $2.4 million in bribes from four contractors, Acevedo Vilá noted.

“PPP is a form of financing to get something built, not an economic development model,” Acevedo Vilá said during an interview with the Daily Sun, adding his administration promoted PPPs to build facilities for the 2010 PanAmerican Games and the Sheraton Hotel at the Convention Center district.

“This financing model is going belly up in the United States because banks have no money, and this is when we decide to jump on PPPs as our salvation?” Acevedo Vilá asked. “The weakness … of the financial sector puts in serious doubt the strategy of depending on PPPs.”

“By establishing a dogmatic and ideological position, the [PPP] legislation weakens controls needed when public assets are placed in private hands. The largest and most ignomious cases of government corruption in Puerto Rico have occurred precisely when millions of dollars in public funds are placed in private hands. If you add to this that the current government has concentrated its plans for economic development fundamentally on PPPs, we are before a potentially explosive combination,” the book states. “Administration officials are going to feel their success is measured if they achieve the PPPs. That pressure combined with weakened controls could force that super board and the heads of corresponding agencies into approving PPPs that in no way benefit the people.”

“PPPs always [have] to be viewed as aimed at promoting the common good, on a case-by-case basis,” Acevedo Vilá says, adding there was no need for a PPP law because many agencies have the power to invest in these partnerships.

Acevedo Vilá points to a June 4 article by the New York Times that attributes three causes for failure of many recent privatizations stateside: “There is not enough financing available in the financial sector, projects that have been achieved have not benefited citizens and have been politically rejected by the people. These three reasons are totally valid in today’s Puerto Rico.”

“That’s why my recommendation to the current government is that it revise its public policy and return to the previous practices … where each PPP was analyzed on a case-by-case basis … with the aim of protecting the public interest and not as a cure-all medicine for our economic ills.”