The executive director of Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board, Natalie Jaresko, is resigning from her position, having steered a historic debt restructuring that put the U.S. territory on firmer financial footing amid criticism from across the political spectrum, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Jaresko notified the oversight board she would resign effective April 1, five years after she was hired to carry out its mission of overhauling Puerto Rico’s finances and resolving the largest municipal-debt default in U.S. history. Her resignation comes after a federal judge approved a debt-adjustment plan last month that writes down $30.5 billion in public debts, honors the pensions promised to retirees and restricts elected officials from resuming some of the fiscal practices that drove Puerto Rico to bankruptcy. Jaresko, who served as Ukraine’s minister of finance before her hiring in Puerto Rico, was the public face of the seven-member board and took the job knowing she would be attacked for pushing painful cutbacks in the government’s financial commitments. Her successor will arrive with most of Puerto Rico’s prebankruptcy debt already restructured. The U.S. government has committed tens of billions of dollars in disaster aid, Medicaid funding, tax credits and other federal transfers to Puerto Rico in coming years, easing the debt deal and averting deficits until 2048, according to board projections. Yet there are persistent economic problems. Labor-force participation lags well behind U.S. states, and poverty is high. The population is expected to continue its long-term decline.
