Governor: No more funds available for Yule bonuses after payout from ARPA funds
By The Star Staff
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia said earlier this week that after the payment of $1,000 for public employees from American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) funds, no more funds are available for bonuses to other public employees.
“That’s why I searched under the rocks to look for available funds and found funds available to grant the thousand-dollar bonus,” the governor said at a news conference.
“The alternatives are no longer the same,” Pierliusi said. “We had to pull out all the stops to grant this bonus in the middle of Christmas that is more than deserved.”
He added that the total ARPA funds used for the special bonus of $1,000 was about $19 million that will go to some but not all public employees.
Asked if next year the same special bonus will be granted to these public employees, the governor replied “It is [one payment] only.”
“As I said, we’re not going to have the same flexibility of ARPA funds anymore; we have 95 percent of ARPA funds committed.”