Apparently, the MREs were sent in February but after the Puerto Rican government decided that they were no longer needed, FEMA stopped distributing them. They’ve been sitting in a warehouse since the summer. And these aren’t the only ones. The agency says there are more meals stored in Puerto Rico with 2020 and 2022 expiration dates.

On the surface, it may just seem like a surplus of goods after a major disaster. But we know too much about how badly FEMA messed up in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria to think this is business as usual. Agency officials even admitted in a report released this summer just how unprepared and uncoordinated they were in responding to this crisis.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz agrees. And she says that auctioning off these meals provides yet another example of how FEMA didn’t do its job.

“It’s an example of bureaucracy inefficiency,” [Yulín Cruz] said. “It reinforces the general feeling of the Puerto Rican people that FEMA did not do their job.”

Puerto Ricans are now preparing for their second holiday season post-Maria. They continue to struggle with the island’s crippling debt and poverty, a mass exodus of residents, school closings, and the physical and mental trauma caused by the hurricane. It’s hard to imagine that these meals wouldn’t have been needed by needy Puerto Ricans—either in the ongoing recovery or as prep for the coming months.

But, FEMA’s response on the island has always been shortsighted and inadequate and the local government continues to be chaotic and a complete disaster. So these meals will now go somewhere else, Puerto Ricans will continue to have a well-founded mistrust in the local and federal government and taxpayers will see their money wasted. Nearly a year and a half after Hurricane Maria made landfall, FEMA is still not doing its job in Puerto Rico. It seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same.