Puerto Rican Lawmakers end crisis

[Juliany]

Puerto Rican Lawmakers Try to End Crisis
Saturday, May 13, 2006

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Puerto Rican lawmakers on Saturday approved the first key pieces of legislation aimed at resolving a budget crisis that has kept more than 100,000 public employees out of work since May 1.
In a session that stretched past midnight, the House of Representatives unanimously authorized an emergency loan of up to $741 million to pay government salaries until the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
The House also voted 48-1 to approve a special fund to help payoff the island's debt, using 1 percent of a new sales tax the size of which has yet to be determined.
A third measure, which passed with 48 votes in favor and one abstention, aims to achieve some $300 million in annual savings by eliminating and consolidating government agencies. lawmakers said the budget reform would only cut the positions of contract employees from the public payroll, not civil servants.
• The measures are contained in a deal Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila reached with lawmakers on Wednesday to end the partial government shutdown. Acevedo had warned the deal could unravel if lawmakers didn't act this weekend.
Under the agreement, public employees would return to work on Monday and receive pay for work missed as a result of the shutdown.
The Senate was expected to consider the measures later Saturday.
The shutdown has crippled government services and hurt businesses in this U.S. Caribbean territory.<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>>>>>>> It also spurred New York-based Moody's Investors Service to cut the rating of the territory's general obligation bonds to one notch above junk status affecting about $25 billion of government debt.
Associated Press writer laura Perez Sanchez contributed to this report.
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Los medios informativo del mundo entero conocen a PR como una Colonia…o TERRITORIO de los EUA..Los enloquecidos y fanaticos populares que por mas de medio siglo han cuvierto la verdad con mentira deven de correr y refujiarce en la Isla Mona porque es grande y bochornoso la verdad que por muchos anos les viene escribiendo el autor Alrojovivo, Neron Y yo su mas humilde servidor Fuliany..Yo insisto que el Tsunami Gobernador A. A. Vila debe de renunciar por mentiroso y cómplice de haber llevado a la sociedad Borincana a la destrucción…