AUTHORIZED STATEMENTS BY DR. MARIO MARAZZI-SANTIAGO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS OF PUERTO RICO, ON THE JUDGMENT ISSUED YESTERDAY BY THE TRIAL COURT, SUPERIOR CHAMBER OF SAN JUAN, IN RELATION TO A LAWSUIT FILED BY THE INSTITUTE

Yesterday afternoon, the Court of First Instance, Superior Chamber of San Juan, issued its judgment and declared in effect the lawsuit filed by the Institute of Statistics. This opinion is another endorsement of the independence of the Institute of Statistics, which is so essential to its operation and its reason for being. After the strong statements of the Court and the President of the New York Federal Reserve this week, we hope to be able to close this chapter, so that at the Institute we can concentrate all our efforts and resources on fully complying with our duties and responsibilities. We reiterate our interest and willingness to meet with the Governor and make the Institute's services and resources available to him.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

February 22, 2018

AUTHORIZED STATEMENTS BY THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS REGARDING THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO AND GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY REGARDING THE STATISTICS OF DEATHS RELATED TO HURRICANES IRMA AND MARIA

Today, we welcomed with great joy the formalization of an agreement between the University of Puerto Rico and George Washington University for the purpose of studying the deaths associated with hurricanes Irma and María.

We have learned that a group of researchers from George Washington University will collaborate in this project, and a group of researchers from the University of Puerto Rico, a public entity that is part of and belongs to the Government of Puerto Rico. We think it's excellent that the research team includes not only experts from outside Puerto Rico, but also people with local knowledge and expertise.

On behalf of the Institute of Statistics, we take this opportunity to make available to researchers from both educational entities our expertise and experience with the Death Registration System of the Government of Puerto Rico. As is public knowledge, the Institute of Statistics has worked with the System in the past and, thanks to our intervention, problems were identified and corrected by the Demographic Registry in accounting for deaths and classification of related causes. Our findings resulted in improvements in the quality of these statistics that have been recognized by the American Statistical Association.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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The Institute asks the Court to resolve the legal dispute related to the composition of its Board of Directors, assuring that there is “real and serious harm” caused to its supervisory functions

San Juan, PR, February 21, 2018 — The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute (Institute) filed a motion before the San Juan Court of First Instance reiterating its request for a Declaratory Judgment and Injuction requested following the legal controversy that arose last summer and which has not yet been resolved.

The request was submitted yesterday, February 20, 2018 and as a prelude to an argumentative hearing that has been scheduled for next Tuesday, February 27, with the objective of the parties' lawyers arguing their respective submitted motions and evaluating the possibility of resolving the case with the written documents already submitted.

Through the legal remedy presented, it is explained how the situation represents “real and serious harm” to the implementation of the Institute's Organic Law (Law 209-2003), in particular, the oversight of statistical functions and products as well as the award of disputes over those who have not complied with information requests issued by the Executive Director.

“Six months have passed since this lawsuit began, and at the Institute, as well as in some cases among the general public in Puerto Rico, in the United States and in the world, the effects have begun to be seen,” the Institute states in the appeal filed and then enumerated the damages suffered due to the lack of an operating Board of Directors.

Below, we highlight some of the damages outlined in the filed motion:

1. Without the Board of Directors, the Institute has not been able to establish the standards, nomenclatures and classification of methods that the Government must follow to estimate the number of deaths caused by hurricanes Irma and María, and to then be able to monitor the quality and reliability of the statistical products generated by the Government on these deaths. In fact, the President of the American Statistical Association, the largest professional association of statisticians in the world, wrote a letter last month to the Governor to express her disappointment at the exclusion of expert experts from the Institute of Statistics in the accounting of deaths from hurricanes, in Executive Order 2018-01.
2. Without the Board of Directors, the Institute has been unable to approve the hiring of an engineering expert to provide technical assistance to the Electric Power Authority so that it can for the first time provide the federal Government with statistics for each generation plant, as required by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, for every electric power supplier in the United States. Worse yet, without these statistics, it has not been possible to design an adequate plan for the recovery of the electrical system, after hurricanes Irma and María destroyed it.
3. Without the Board of Directors, the Institute has been unable to respond to numerous requests related to information requests, which has virtually stopped the implementation of Law 187-2015, also known as the Law on the Interagency Validation Portal for the Granting of Incentives for Economic Development, an important anti-corruption and transparency tool, which facilitates the interagency oversight of tax incentives granted by public government agencies to private entities.
4. Without the Board of Directors, the Institute has been unable to recruit the resources to carry out the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which we were about to begin this year, after it had not been conducted in almost 2 decades.

“The damage caused to Puerto Rico is real. In the absence of a Board of Directors, the Institute has been unable to take action to ensure that statistics on the impact of hurricanes are reliable and meet quality methodologies and criteria, at a time when the entire world has questioned these statistics from the Government of Puerto Rico,” the Institute points out in the legal resource. In addition, it requests the Court to issue the requested Declaratory Judgment and Injunction so that the Institute can be certain about who makes up, in law, its Board of Directors and can deal with pending and future matters as required by Law 209-2003.

On the other hand, the motion presented by the Institute states that the recent letter from the Fiscal Oversight Board about the Institute dismisses from its face the “removals” of the Institute's Board members under Act 3. He assures that, beyond the constitutional questions about the way in which the Governor has sought to remove 4 of the members of the Board of Directors, the only thing Law 3 could apply to Institute officials is if they represent a problem or a potential problem for the Governor of Puerto Rico to formulate and implement the fiscal plan required by PROMESA. “All the components created under the federal PROMESA law have highlighted the importance of keeping the Institute free from political intervention,” the Institute maintains in its motion, so there is no way to use the federal PROMESA Act to justify the removal of members of the Institute's Board of Directors.

On the other hand, if the Governor understood that some members of the Institute's Board of Directors were threatening the Government's compliance with the fiscal plan or with the provisions of PROMESA, he must formulate whatever charges he saw fit the members thus charged and carry out due process for their removal. However, to date, no charge has been made to charge members of the Institute's Board of Directors with actions that constitute just cause for their removal.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The IEPR has nearly 300 statistical products in its inventory, accessible through www.estadisticas.pr. In addition, it is a guardian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through www.data.pr.gov and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: www.indicadores.pr.

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the IEPR manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed at: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website: www.estadisticas.pr.gov. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook (estadisticas.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) accounts.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/787-688-0401

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PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

February 15, 2018

AUTHORIZED STATEMENTS BY DR. MARIO MARAZZI-SANTIAGO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE PUERTO RICO INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS, ON COMMUNICATION FROM THE FISCAL OVERSIGHT BOARD TO THE GOVERNOR REGARDING THE REORGANIZATION OF THE STATISTICAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PUERTO RICAN GOVERNMENT

We appreciate the statements of the Fiscal Oversight Board regarding the desirability of maintaining the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute as a public instrument, independent and separate from the Government of Puerto Rico.

In addition, the Board made several recommendations, some of which we wish to comment on. In the first instance, he proposed modernizing and updating Puerto Rico's statistical functions and consolidating them into the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute. We share the concern of the Board and the Government that the fragmentation of statistical functions results in costly and ineffective processes. We are under orders from the Government to design a reorganization plan dedicated to statistical functions that achieve this objective. It's never too late to start working together, collaboratively, to achieve shared and desired goals.

Second, the Board joined the expressions of the bipartisan congressional Task Force of Puerto Rico, also created under the federal PROMESA Act, to the effect that the Institute must be allocated a larger budget, aligned with the important responsibilities it exercises. This recommendation represents an extraordinary opportunity for the Government to comply, for the first time, with the budgetary allocation approved for the Institute in its Organic Law.

Third, the Board recommended that the Institute's independence be protected from political intervention. This is an extremely sensitive issue that every Government we have worked with has had to confront, know, understand, process, accept and eventually take advantage of. At the moment, the Institute oversees the statistical work of the Executive Branch. In any other area, oversight functions would not be allowed to be disrupted. For example, one of the baseball teams would never be allowed to choose or change or influence the referee of a game. Why do we think with statistics that we can, should and is it even normal?

We all suffer from the same disinformation after decades of politicized and underfunded deterioration of the statistical functions of the Government of Puerto Rico. Finally, for 10 years we have had a new instrument, the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute, whose main purpose is to pave the way to complete, reliable statistics with fast and universal access. Let's take advantage of it.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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To create the “Department of Economic Development and Trade Reorganization Plan Implementation Act of 2018”; amend Articles 4, 5, repeal Articles 6, 7, 11 and 12, renumber Article 8 as 6, renumber Articles 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 as Articles 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 of the Department of Economic Development and Trade Reorganization Plan 4-1994; amend Article 5 of Act 5 of Act 4 M. 22 of July 24, 1985, as amended, known as the “Economic Development Bank Act for Puerto Rico”...

PRESS RELEASE

February 7, 2018

DR. MARIO MARAZZI-SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Executive Director of the Institute assures that it is a “dangerous precedent” and guarantees the loss of federal funds the merger of that body into the DDEC

San Juan, PR, February 7, 2018 — After asserting that its provisions are contrary to federal and state public policy aimed at preventing the manipulation of data and statistics, the executive director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics (Institute), Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, today expressed his opposition to House Project 1403 (P. de la C. 1403), which proposes the merger of the Institute into the Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC) in order to outsource its functions.

“The provisions on the Institute of Statistics in P. de la C. 1403 are contrary to federal and state public policy aimed at avoiding the manipulation of data and statistics, to benefit the interests of current administrations or private interests with influence. In short, these constitute a dangerous precedent that destroys the credibility of a transparent, effective, objective and complete system of collecting statistical data for the benefit of Puerto Rico,” said Marazzi-Santiago during the presentation of his paper to the Special Commission for the Restructuring and Reorganization of Puerto Rico and the Chamber of Government Commission.

The Executive Director of the Institute anticipated that if the Reorganization Plan is approved and implemented, the Institute will also result in the loss of federal funds in that body. He recalled that on December 18, 2017, the New Government of Puerto Rico Act, No. 122-2017, was approved in order to maximize personal resources to the Executive Branch and the transfer, outsourcing and creation of new and more efficient government structures and agencies. Article 4.02 of that Act provides that “any change to a program or agency under this Act will be rescinded if the change results in the loss of federal funds in a program being used in Puerto Rico.”

He added that, likewise, Article 14 of Reorganization Plan No. 1 provides that any change to a program or agency under this Act “will be rescinded if the change results in the loss of federal funds in a program being used in Puerto Rico.” In the case of the Institute, the proposed consolidation with the DDEC and the subsequent outsourcing guarantee Puerto Rico's non-compliance with current agreements with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under the National Violent Death Registration System, a federal competitive grant that the Institute won recently, said Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

“We have a duty to alert this honorable Commission to take corrective action and amend P. de la C. 1403 accordingly. Specifically, in accordance with Article 4.02 of Law No. 122-2017, P. de la C. 1403 must be amended by deleting the entire chapter dedicated to the Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

Dr. Marazzi-Santiago took advantage of his participation to propose three changes through which greater independence could effectively be achieved for the Institute, unlike the ill-advised measures contained in P. de la C. 1403. The following are the alternatives presented in his paper:

1. The Institute's Board has 1 member who is a government official. This may limit the Institute's independence. To address this detail, Act No. 209 can be amended so that no member of the Institute's Board of Directors is a government official. This ensures the Institute's ability to operate independently. They would all be private citizens, with no connection to current or previous political administrations, nominated on the basis of their personal and professional integrity and objectivity, and their educational preparation and demonstrated competence in the use of statistics, and will work on behalf of the users of the data, and not of other interests.
2. Exempt the Institute from administrative laws that hinder its ability to operate regardless of political influences and that increase bureaucracy, without implying that the Institute in any way abandon the healthy public administration policies that have distinguished its operations since its inception. This includes Laws 66- 2014, 3-2017, 8-2017 and 26-2017. The Institute must be able to appoint the experts it deems appropriate to complete its highly technical tasks and to manage its allocated budget without political influence.
3. Provide for all or some of the candidates for the Institute's Board to be proposed by professional and industry associations that represent these fields of expertise rather than government officials.

On the other hand, with regard to the Institute's financial self-sustainability, Dr. Marazzi-Santiago assured that a bill (P. del S. 12) already exists before the Legislative Assembly that proposes amendments to the Institute's Enabling Act and that would empower it and would allow it to obtain a greater portion of its income from sources outside the Government of Puerto Rico, so it is unnecessary to outsource the statistics system to achieve these purposes.

The Executive Director of the Institute also highlighted that there is broad and open opposition both at the local and federal levels to the provisions related to the Institute in Reorganization Plan No. 1 and in P. de la C. 1403, including the American Statistical Association, the largest professional association of statisticians in the world, as well as 15 Democratic and Republican congressmen, the Puerto Rico Private Sector Coalition, the Puerto Rico Transparency Network and about 2,000 people who formalized in just over a week your position through a cyber request on the portal change.org.

“As a result of the above-mentioned operational and fiscal independence, and of the sound public resource management policies adopted by the Institute since its inception, the Institute is one of very few governmental entities in Puerto Rico characterized by its efficiency and agility, by never having incurred a budget deficit, and by making the best possible use of the budgetary allocations it receives. In other words, the Institute is not part of the problem of bureaucracy, redundancy and inefficiency that Act No. 122-2017 and P. de la C. 1403 intend to address. On the contrary, the Institute is a public entity that serves as a model of public administration,” concluded Dr. Marazzi-Santiago.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access. The IEPR has in its inventory, accessible through www.estadisticas.pr.gov, about 300 statistical products. In addition, it is a custodian and provides access to over 100 data sets or “data sets” through www.data.pr.gov and to over 40 tables and more than 6 thousand indicators through: www.indicadores.pr.

In addition, as the leading entity of Puerto Rico's SDC, the IEPR manages the SDC portal, which contains the main statistical reports and publications of the U.S. Census Bureau on Puerto Rico, specifically those that are most in demand, such as annual population estimates; the Puerto Rico Community Survey and official statistics on Puerto Rico's decennial population and housing censuses, among others. The Puerto Rico SDC portal can be accessed through: https://censo.estadisticas.pr/.

For more information you can visit our website:www.estadisticas.pr.gov. In addition, you can follow us on social networks through Facebook (estadisticas.pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) accounts.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes/787-688-0401

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