In addition to these proposals, the governor’s office is preparing to submit the commonwealth’s first balanced budget in decades — a move that could be politically risky, considering the government is the island’s largest employer.
In Puerto Rico, 45 percent of the population lives in poverty, and the unemployment rate is a solid 15 percent.
Those numbers aren’t a good sign for any area of the United States, least of all an island whose name translates to “Rich Port.” But after years of recession, Puerto Rico’s debt crisis finally seems to have reached a day of reckoning.
Officials have opened a public campaign to field ideas for how to fix the crisis once and for all.
A government website is accepting suggestions, and close to 400 ideas have been submitted. At least 150 have been accepted by a government committee for consideration. Among the ideas to be considered are calls legalize marijuana and prostitution, and to drastically cut back the amount of public holidays that workers on the island celebrate.
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