House committee reviews bill to restore Puerto Rico Tourism Company as public corporation

The House of Representatives convened a public hearing on Thursday, Sept. 25, at 9:40 a.m. to review P. de la C. 822, a proposal to recognize and preserve the Puerto Rico Tourism Company as a public corporation with statutory powers, governance rules and operational divisions. The Tourism Company’s legal adviser, licenciado Raúl Márquez, read a prepared position statement and answered members’ questions on behalf of the executive director; Nilsa Rodríguez Rivera, identified in the record as the company’s chief financial officer, accompanied him.

The bill’s purpose, as presented, is to restore the Tourism Company’s corporate status (reversing a prior 2017 reorganization that had proposed converting it into an office within the Department of Economic Development and Commerce), to re-establish the company’s board structure, to assign contracting and regulatory powers to the company and to statutorily create or elevate an Office of Air and Maritime Access. Marquez told the committee that a prior reorganization included a clause that suspended the effect of the change until the department secretary certified completion of a transition; that certification never occurred, and the company has continued operating de facto as a public corporation. "El cambio que estamos proponiendo realmente no es un cambio, sino es reconocer una realidad que tenemos de facto y jurídicamente," Marquez said.

Why it matters: Tourism, presenters said, is a major economic engine for Puerto Rico. The Tourism Company’s written statement cited an estimated total economic impact of $18,000,000,000 in 2024, composed in the document of roughly $11.7 billion in direct visitor spending plus additional indirect and induced effects; the statement also recorded room-occupancy (canon) receipts of about $142.5 million for fiscal 2024. Supporters told committee members the bill would preserve the company’s ability to contract, audit short-term lodgings, manage promotional matching funds with airlines, and retain and distribute room-tax receipts according to the formula in Article 31 of Ley 272 (2003). Marquez…