By The Star Staff
New Progressive Party candidate for governor Jenniffer González Colón insisted on Monday on her proposals to improve the energy situation on the island, with the creation by law of the position of energy “czar.”
“What happens is that the contractor, we are talking about LUMA being a contractor, is a supplier of the government; it is not going to impose on the government what the legal structure is or who is going to be in charge,” González Colón said at a press conference. “And when I am talking about proposing the figure of a czar, it is a legal figure. That is why the La Fortaleza chief of staff criticized the proposal and said eight figures were already doing the work, which is not correct. They do not do it, but I do not know that any of the governor’s assistants do it. … [T]hey don’t have the legal force to do the coordination that I’m talking about with the federal agencies and the state agencies, they don’t have it, and much less the oversight.”
“When I talk about a czar, I’m talking about a specialized team that can do that job,” the resident commissioner added. “Within the framework of the law, they are representatives of the government of Puerto Rico, because we’ve already seen that whoever is in the office of Public-Private Partnerships, well, they operate as an assistant. I don’t want an assistant, I want an overseer. Someone who is speaking for the interests of the people of Puerto Rico and who gives me, as governor, the tools to be able to put in line not only LUMA, but any government contractor that fails to comply with the people of Puerto Rico.”
“If the people of Puerto Rico give me a mandate in November to have a House and Senate … I will approve that legislation, and they [LUMA Energy and Genera PR] will have to adjust to the new public policy of the government of Puerto Rico,” González Colón said. “I assure you that before the first 45 days of the government, we will approve that law so that we can start monitoring it from day 1.”
The Resident Commissioner's words imply that she knew nothing about LUMA and GENERA's expertise, capabilities and commitment to rebuild PR's energy grid; unfortunately, attempting to escape history is not easy. In the last 24 years, she occupied several positions during the administrations of Sila Calderon/PDP, Acevedo Vila/PDP, Luis Fortuno/NPP, Garcia Padilla/PDP, Ricardo Rosello/NPP, Vazquez Garced/NPP and Pierluisi/NPP (Representative, House Speaker, Chair, PR's Republicans and Resident Commissioner) which means she was in the middle of the situation that brought LUMA and GENERA to PR. To claim that she wasn't part of this debacle is not disingenuous but plain simple dishonest; she should have known the plan conceived and executed by the NPP/PDP to dismantle the PR Electric Power Authority and replace…
Jenniffer González Colón, la nouvelle candidate du Parti progressiste au poste de gouverneur, a fait valoir ses projets visant à renforcer la situation énergétique de l'île, notamment en créant un poste de « tsar » de l'énergie par la loi. Drift Boss