The Puerto Rico Senate was expected to vote Wednesday on energy legislation that Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority bondholders have said is necessary for them to agree to a bond restructuring.
Gov. Alejandro García Padilla and bondholder and PREPA representatives have agreed on a new amended
The Senate will probably pass the measure, the Senate source said. As of 6 p.m. the vote hadn't taken place. The House of Representatives would also have to approve the legislation and the governor would have to sign it, before it would become law.
According to a story in El Nuevo Día on Wednesday afternoon, the majority Popular Democratic Party may not have enough votes to pass the measure in the House. Four PPD House representatives have indicated they have reservations about the measure or are opposed to it. The PPD has 27 members in the House currently in a 51 seat house.
For the bill to pass the House it would need to receive 26 votes. Members of the opposition New Progressive Party rarely vote for PPD-sponsored bills. NPP House leader Jenniffer González Col-n has expressed her opposition to the bill.
The bondholders reached an agreement with PREPA in early September that specified, among other things, that Puerto Rico's government would have to approve a securitization of PREPA's debt and would have to take steps to make the authority more politically independent.
Since then, the bond insurers and holders of lines of credit have also signed on to the agreement with PREPA, conditional on Puerto Rico's passage of the energy legislation.
The deadline to pass this legislation has been pushed back more than once and now stands at the end of Feb. 16.
According to a statement from PPD sources in the Senate, the bill will introduce measures to professionalize the leadership of PREPA and make it independent of political pressures. Puerto Rico's Energy's Commission, which oversees PREPA and possible electric rate changes, has been strengthened. The bondholders had been seeking to weaken the commission, at least with regard to its review of a widely anticipated petition for a near term rate increase.
The legislation also sets up an independent entity to oversee what will be restructured PREPA debt.
