It was a series of lies, one after another.
The process that led Gov. Jenniffer González to sign the Transparency Act amendments on Sunday — a measure proposed by Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz — was not only deceitful but also revealing.
To be honest, what stands out most to me about this process is the lack of integrity and dishonesty of the governor’s inner circle. Her advisers held several conversations last week with organizations opposed to the bill, which had been requesting a hearing since November, and at every step they were told that, starting next Monday, a meeting would be scheduled to discuss their objections to the measure.
So while everyone was waiting to hear the date and time of that meeting, the governor stabbed the people of Puerto Rico in the back by approving a measure that was not in her party’s platform and that contradicts the public policy of efficient, agile services for citizens that she promised when she asked for votes to reach La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion.
The amendments run counter to all the evidence that scientists, academics, activists, researchers and journalists have presented to the government about the obstacles they already face when requesting documents. None of those concerns are addressed in any of the amendments to Senate Bill 63 (PS 63), now Act 156 of 2025.
When anyone calls La Fortaleza’s main phone number and asks for the contact information of the information officers — officials the law requires every agency to designate — they say they do not know whether they even have information officers. They transfer you to the Press Office, where no one answers. On top of it, as of today, when you submit a request for information to La Fortaleza, you will have to copy the information officers, whose names and email addresses we do not know, and Gov. Jenniffer González Colón. Her email is [email protected]. In the case of agency heads or mayors, who also have to be copied on requests, you are left to figure out their email addresses on your own because they are not public or easily available.
More than 50 professional, civic and community organizations in Puerto Rico, along with 20 U.S. and international entities that reviewed the bill, asked the governor to veto it.
To add to the fact that no one requested this legislation, the Senate held no public hearings, lawmakers added amendments that further weakened the measure, and the House took it up on an expedited vote. Its speaker Carlos “Johnny Méndez” also lied when he said there was “no rush” to approve it. And now the governor has signed it without facing the organizations, the academic sector, communities or the press.
This is an anti-democratic law that strips Puerto Ricans of rights already recognized in our Constitution and benefits only a despotic administration intent on governing without oversight and behind the public’s back. The new bureaucratic hurdles are designed to wear down anyone who wants to know, who wants to scrutinize their government, who wants to participate.
The governor had ample information, data and reasons not to sign this bill. The veto was handed to her on a silver platter. The question on everyone’s mind is: Why did the governor sign a bill pushed by her political archrival, Thomas Rivera Schatz? What happened — did they twist her arm? Perhaps, in the end, they simply share a similar view on free expression and access to information: that these rights should be reduced to make it easier to commit misconduct and abuse power. That is just one possibility.
What they may not understand is that journalists are like a pebble in your shoe, not the kind you can shake out, but the kind that stays with you for the length of your political career. Journalists who carry out their work with rigor and courage do not stand back in the face of abuse. They push harder. They look for creative ways around obstacles — for loopholes, for alternative sources — and they pursue their reporting with even greater determination.
