Bayamón mayor anticipates inventory tax freeze will be approved

Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera Cruz

By The Star Staff

Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera Cruz said Wednesday that he anticipates the bill pending in the Legislative Assembly to freeze the inventory tax for five years while a substitute for the payment is found will be approved.

“That situation is already being addressed by the [Popular Democratic Party] Mayors Association and the [New Progressive Party] Mayors Federation and the fiscal control [Financial Oversight and Management] board,” Rivera Cruz said at a press conference. “And I was at the last meeting because they asked me to accompany them, where an agreement was reached to freeze it for five years. The bill that is in the Legislature will be supported in order to create the corresponding mechanisms for a transition process in that period of time, because it cannot be done overnight because it can create a huge gap.”

“Because of that money, perhaps people do not know, there is one percent that goes to the payment of the state bond issues and another percent that goes to the payment of the bond issues of the municipalities,” the mayor noted. “That is, that money is already committed. You would have to find a substitute for that money. For that reason, any bill that may be presented, the fiscal control board will intervene and will stop it until everything is analyzed.”

Rivera Cruz rejected the contention that municipalities can eliminate the inventory tax through an ordinance.

“With a resolution or a municipal ordinance, you cannot go above a law,” he said. “Everyone in Puerto Rico agrees, and we agree, that something must be done. And that is why there were meetings with the [oversight] board and this transitional mechanism will be created to then be able to reach an understanding that is reasonable. In the same way that the fiscal control board 10 years ago said the equalization fund was going to be eliminated, that there was going to be a transitional process. This is simple, this is a law. The law … an ordinance cannot go above the law. The ordinance can only make a variation, but not touch the law.”

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia has not ruled out calling an extraordinary session after the November elections to address the inventory tax freeze or any other issue that requires consensus to be approved.