Orlando Rivera Berríos, director of Puerto Rico’s Office of Management and Budget (OGP), defended the hiring of Itza M. García, former deputy secretary of the Governor’s Office, to help ensure an orderly transition and continuity of the government’s ERP platform, whose launch in early July has caused serious disruptions in payments to thousands of employees, contractors and government suppliers due to lack of training and errors in the system, which centralizes finance, payroll, procurement, human resources and contracting for the executive branch. Rivera Berríos said that while previous administrations spent more than $200 million on the project without it ever operating, under García’s direct direction it went live within a year and a half.
García resigned from La Fortaleza in August after it was confirmed she was under criminal investigation by the Office of the Panel on the Independent Special Prosecutor (OPFEI), and on Tuesday the Office of Government Ethics (OEG) filed a complaint against her for allegedly intervening in the hiring of her partner Luis Alberto Sánchez Andino’s company, Next Wave Solutions, LLC, at the Department of Economic Development and Commerce, allegedly violating Article 4.2(s) of Law 1-2012. The OEG also filed a complaint against former Governance secretary Francisco Domenech.
The OGP contract with García, in effect from October 27 until April, was granted ad honorem after the OEG denied a waiver for the $150-per-hour arrangement, which would have allowed her to bill up to $84,600, more than her prior salary. Governor Jenniffer González said Tuesday that García "will have to explain it and prove it and defend herself from those accusations."