The bill has been controversial for plenty of reasons, chief among which is that PROMESA gives sweeping power to a financial-oversight board, which has yet to be appointed. They will be in charge of doing things such as approving budgets and fiscal plans, they can veto debt issuances and determine which projects get funded and which don’t. And they don’t answer to Puerto Rico or its leaders. Instead, board members are appointed by the president for three-year terms and can only be removed by the president. As a result, some feel PROMESA gives the people of Puerto Rico and its elected officials virtually no agency in the island’s future. The island’s governor will serve only as an ex-officio member of the board and only one of the voting seats explicitly requires that the appointee reside or have a business in the territory. Many of these critics argue that the emergency measure is a cop out compared to bigger, more substantial changes, such as statehood or formal bankruptcy, options that many had hoped would provide longer-term solutions for the island’s ongoing problems.
All of these together makes many onlookers understandably concerned, especially since many of them believe that the island, and its residents, are often treated like colonies with second-class citizens. “It shows what complete imperial power there is in America,” a Puerto Rican student named Camila Sánchez told The New York Times.
Senator Bob Menendez, one of the bill’s most outspoken critics didn’t mince words when it comes to his thoughts about the usefulness of PROMESA back in May, “I'm afraid this bill provides little more than a Band-Aid on a bullet hole with regard to Puerto Rico's unsustainable debt," he said. "Mark my words—if we don't seize this opportunity to address this crisis in a meaningful way, we'll be right back here in a year from now picking up the pieces."
Menendez—and others—criticized PROMESA for what it didn’t promise, including: the provision of any federal tax dollars to chip away at existing debt, a path to statehood, or a special dispensation that would have allowed the territory to file for chapter 9 bankruptcy—the route that New York City and Detroit have considered to relieve themselves of burdensome, unpayable debt. Instead, the recently passed bill continues to treat Puerto Rico and its debt as an anomaly—neither state, nor municipality, which leaves it in a nebulous space when it comes to questions about how much of a markdown creditors will be asked to take on debt, and how future budgets and finances will be doled out to the island and its people.
More: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/puerto-rico-promesa-debt/489797/
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