By The Star Staff
With the looming threat of insolvency for some 20 municipalities on the island, including Comerío starting in January, the urgency of the financial crisis cannot be overstated.
Irvin Rivera, the Comerío mayoral candidate for the Popular Democratic Party, has emphasized the need for the central government, not the Financial Oversight and Management Board, to make the pay-as-you-go program decisions.
“It is an impact on cities because we were already paying for it,” he said. “The government has tried on several occasions to relieve us of that payment. Still, the [oversight] board insists this would be another subsidy to the municipalities. It has then imposed charges on us that belong to the state. The one who must pay for the retirement is the state, which had the retirement funds, and they were the ones who misused them, not the municipalities.”
Currently, the oversight board is saying towns should pay retirement and health care benefits for employees and not the central government, which has traditionally paid for those items.
“[... N]ow we have the burden of assuming the payment of the pension. Same with health card funds,” Rivera said. “It is the government that approved the service. Still, then they force us to pay a portion that we believe is unfair. We have to continue fighting or demanding that we be exempted or compensated in some other way to maintain our services.”
Comerío Mayor José A. “Josian” Santiago Rivera said the oversight board, with all the cuts imposed on the municipalities, and even more recently with the elimination of the payment exemption under the so-called pay-as-you-go program, is thrusting municipal councils into chaos.
“That is another demonstration of how difficult the fiscal outlook is for municipalities,” Santiago Rivera said. “Notice that there is talk of greater impositions, but on the other hand there is also talk of the reduction in the budget of the municipalities by eliminating the transfers made by the state. So if you take away from us, on the one hand, and increase our obligations [on the other], there is no other path other than chaos, other than for us to become insolvent and for the community to be deprived of essential services, which is what we are proposing.”
“It is not that the mayors have fewer resources or that municipal officials are affected; those who are affected are the citizens who are even neglected at this moment by the government,” Santiago Rivera continued. “The aid from the state government is no longer present in the towns; that is, sports, sports facilities, roads, [filling of] potholes, the distribution of water when the water goes out and aqueducts do not arrive, the problems that are generated to serve the elderly, medical appointments, care for those who are convalescing, the items they need, diapers for adults, help me God, tell me any issue and I will tell you that the municipality is the one who responds.”
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