For thousands and thousands of Puerto Ricans, energy outages are greater than an inconvenience. Households should plan meals figuring out meals could spoil. Small companies preserve mills on standby. Hospitals brace for outages that put lives in danger. Regardless of years of guarantees, the state of affairs retains getting worse.
This isn’t only a Puerto Rico downside. Puerto Rico’s energy disaster is inseparable from the failures of the island’s Monetary Oversight and Administration Board. Created by Congress in 2016 to revive stability, the board has as an alternative presided over practically a decade of dysfunction, whereas charging Puerto Rico handsomely for the privilege.
The island is a U.S. territory ruled, in key methods, by federal authority. When Washington creates an oversight board, controls the purse strings and appoints management, it owns the end result. Each extended blackout, each stalled reconstruction venture, and each added layer of forms prices U.S. taxpayers cash. Congress has already appropriated tens of billions in catastrophe and restoration funds for Puerto Rico, but a lot of it stays tied up whereas consultants rack up charges and the grid stays fragile.
Final summer season, President Trump took a primary step by dismissing 5 of the board’s seven members. It was an overdue acknowledgment that the established order wasn’t working. .
Energy outages on the island are 7.8 instances extra frequent and final greater than 13 instances longer than on the mainland. On New Yr’s Eve 2024, practically 90% of Puerto Rico misplaced electrical energy. Households throughout San Juan relied on telephone flashlights to maintain kids secure. Months later, one other outage knocked out energy for 1.4 million prospects, forcing hospitals onto backup mills and shuttering numerous small companies. Even within the week main as much as the Tremendous Bowl, energy went out once more throughout elements of San Juan. Economists estimate that every island-wide blackout prices Puerto Rico between $70 million and $150 million.
Now, insult is being added to harm. Public hearings have simply begun on a proposal by LUMA Vitality to dramatically elevate the mounted month-to-month cost on electrical energy payments from $4 at this time to $15, with some situations pushing mixed mounted fees above $40 a month. That is in a spot the place electrical energy already prices excess of the U.S. common.
In the meantime, what has the Oversight Board been doing? Burning by greater than $2 billion on consultants, attorneys and advisers. Many cost $1,000 an hour, roughly what the common Puerto Rican employee earns in a full week.
Voters see it, they usually’re indignant. A current ballot of Puerto Ricans dwelling in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania discovered that 95% fee the island’s electrical system as “poor.” Practically everybody — 93% — believes the board’s management needs to be changed. An awesome 83% say Trump ought to make fixing the grid a precedence.
These voters aren’t asking for miracles. They’re asking for competence, accountability and urgency. Trump must appoint new board members dedicated to transparency, fiscal duty and rebuilding an influence system that works.
Julio Fuentes is chairman of the Nationwide Hispanic Vitality Council and president and CEO of the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce/InsideSources
