MOST AMERICANS know Puerto Rico as the scene of the worst humanitarian and economic disaster of our nation’s recent history, Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in September 2017 and from which it has yet to recover completely. Just before that, though, Puerto Rico had been the focal point of a far more hopeful development: a rare piece of legislation enacted by Congress in 2016 with the goal of pragmatically addressing a real-world problem on a bipartisan basis. Yet the basic solution — a bankruptcy-like debt workout led by a board of financial experts and supervised by an impartial federal court — offered Puerto Rico a chance to reform its government and resume growth. Now, however, there is a man-made disaster looming, in the form of a Feb. 15 federal appeals court ruling declaring the Financial Oversight and Management Board that Promesa created unconstitutional. In a fit of constitutional persnicketiness, the 1st Circuit agreed, brushing aside the board’s argument that the Promesa Act appointment process was perfectly constitutional in light of Congress’s broad authority to legislate for federal territories such as Puerto Rico.

Source: Washington Post March 04, 2019 00:00 UTC