When Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vazquez announced late last month that she was acceding to requests from the commonwealth’s Congressionally mandated fiscal oversight board to slash some government-worker pensions by as much as 8.5 percent, the reaction was swift, Bloomberg News reported. Protesters returned to the front of the governor’s mansion in San Juan’s colonial quarter — the site of protests that eventually ousted former governor Ricardo Rosselló this past summer — and even at what they believed to be the private homes of board members. Adding her voice to the street protests, Maite Oronoz Rodríguez, the head of Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court, sent a letter to the board warning of mass resignations in the island’s judiciary because of pension concerns, stating that “after a lifetime of dedication and service to Puerto Rico, our judges do not deserve to be speculating about their future based on the limited information” she said the board had made public about its plans. Despite her televised statement that she did “not support any reduction in benefits to retirees,” Vazquez nevertheless said she wanted the board to finish its work “as soon as possible” and said that the cuts now would avoid the need for larger pension cuts of up to 25 percent in the future. While Vazquez’s administration opposes cutting pensions, it won’t obstruct the progress of the federal board’s debt adjustment plan, Eli Diaz Atienza, the governor’s non-voting board representative, said during a public meeting of the board last month. Still, the administration will seek to alleviate future pension cuts through the commonwealth’s budget, Diaz Atienza said.
