As Congress begins work on a budget reconciliation and tax reform package, Governor Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colón announced today that Representatives Ron Estes (R-Kansas) and Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands) have introduced bipartisan legislation to temporarily increase the amount of funding transferred to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands from the excise taxes collected on rum produced in the two territories and imported in to the rest of the United States, commonly known as the rum cover-over. The bill would extend the increase through 2032 and make it retroactive to January 1, 2022.

Governor Jenniffer González-Colón thanked Senators Rick Scott and Alex Padilla for reintroducing the Caribbean Border Counternarcotics Strategy Act, a bill the Governor led in the previous Congress to codify the requirement for the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to develop a strategy to combat drug trafficking from the Caribbean into the United States, with a particular focus on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The administration of Governor Jenniffer González-Colón, through the Governor’s Chief of Staff and Director of the Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF), Francisco Domenech, issued the following statement regarding the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico’s (FOMB) approval of the final Certified Fiscal Plan for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA)