Posted on 12/04/2017 9:12:25 AM PST by ColdOne
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello Nevares last month asked federal taxpayers to shell out $94 billion to pay for the territory’s recovery from Hurricane Maria — then turned around and paid out about $100 million in Christmas bonuses to island government employees.
The governor’s aides say the bonuses are a longstanding tradition and part of the law, and were planned for in the budget approved last summer.
But that budget came well before Hurricanes Irma and Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, leaving much of the territory in ruin and leaving the government begging for federal assistance.
The island’s financial oversight board, created by Congress as part of a deal to bail the government out of a potential debt default last year, called the payments “imprudent” and said the hurricanes should have forced the governor to rethink his decisions.
And the payments could dent Mr. Rossello Nevares’ efforts to get Capitol Hill to pony up for the recovery, where the $94 billion price tag the island has set is already meeting with shock.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
why should government employees have to give up their Christmas bonuses just because 90% of the country is without power? /s
It is the scam artist’s job to separate fools from their money.
The taxpayers are the suckers.
The largest employer in Puerto Rico today is the Government. Public service workers presently total 285,000 or roughly 26% of the work fork. Government employment grew dramatically in the late 1940s and early 1950s, going from 2.5% of the labor force in 1940 to 19% in the mid-1960s. By 1974 it had reached a staggering 28.6%, which ranks well ahead of almost every state of the United States Most public service workers employed by public authorities and state corporations have had the right to organize labor unions, bargain collectively and strike since the passage of the Puerto Rico Labor Relations Act of 1945. Yet the majority of workers directly employed by the government have not been able to unionize.
ping
Who do they think they are, Wall Street bankers?
I can’t get HL Mencken’s comment about black flags out of my mind.
Meanwhile, Florida is the destination for as many as 350,000 Puerto Ricans.
Florida is blue in the 2020 election
Holy cat balls, Batman. You’re not kidding. The place is a mess, but we all knew that. I went looking and found articles like this:
“For starters, of the 900,000 people who have jobs in Puerto Rico, roughly 300,000 work for government. The latest budget drives home the fact that the island’s fiscal problems are far from over.
According to Caribbean Business, the just-closed 2015 fiscal year resulted in a US$700 million deficit. By the way, that estimate does not include nearly $300 million in yet-to-be-paid tax returns. In other words, the shortfall could top US$1 billion.
What happened to those billions that Puerto Rico borrowed last year?
Last year was supposed to be a balanced budget. So is this year’s budget. It’s not balanced either. Is it worth even mentioning the projected deficit, since estimates are so consistently wrong and “revised”?
At the heart of Puerto Rico’s financial mess is government spending, plain and simple. To fix the problem, the government must cut no less than 30 percent from the government workforce — about 100,000 individuals”.
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