Rafael Hernández Montañez, a leading Puerto Rican legislator, called for the ouster of Carlos García from the Puerto Rico Oversight Board.
President Barack Obama approved García and six others to be board members in late August. The U.S. Congress and Obama have set up the board to govern Puerto Rico and potentially restructure the island's public sector debt.
Hernández Montañez, who is president of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives Treasury and Budget Committee, said Sunday that he had sent a letter to Obama asking him to remove García from the board.
García was the president of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico in the gubernatorial administration of Luis Fortuño from 2009 to 2011.
In his letter Hernández Montañez said that board members "must enjoy unquestionable professional and moral integrity." During García's presidency, Hernández Montañez said, "significant amounts of public debt were incurred by the Government of Puerto Rico which now cannot be repaid and has resulted in the present financial chaos we find ourselves in." In a press statement Hernández Montañez said that García was at least partially responsible for about $18.5 billion of Puerto Rico's debt.
Next in his letter, Hernández Montañez said, "As the most senior representative of the government of Puerto Rico in financial matters, Mr. García offered to potential investors billions of dollars in bonds and notes of the government and its instrumentalities. These are the same bonds and notes that Mr. García, as a member of the Oversight Board, must now sit in a room with investors to restructure." Hernández Montañez said this was a conflict of interest.
The representative went on to tell Obama that the board may be considering appointing Bill Cooper, a member of the staff of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, to be its executive director. To appoint him would be "a grave mistake," he said. Cooper was a principal writer of PROMESA in Congress and if he were to become the executive director he would be handling both legislative and executive actions on the same matter, Hernández Montañez said.
Cooper led the trade association for the liquefied natural gas industry until 2014. He was responsible for a brief section in the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act that called for the transition of electrical power generation sources from oil to natural gas. For him to go on to lead the board with a role in implementing this transition would extend this conflict of interest, Hernández Montañez said.
Hernández Montañez sent his letter to Obama and cc'd U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and U.S. Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch.
Puerto Rico Senate Pres. Eduardo Bhatia Gautier and other prominent Puerto Ricans have also called for Obama to remove García from the board.
García couldn't be reached for comment. Representatives of Ryan, Hatch, and a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury didn't immediately respond to a request for a comment.
