After announcing last Sunday that she had signed amendments to the Transparency and Expedited Procedure for Access to Public Information Act, Gov. Jenniffer González Colón said that Senate Bill 63 (SB 63) seeks to clarify “confusion” in the process of requesting public data, reduce lawsuits and give the press priority access to information. However, she did not present any data or statistics to support those claims.
When contacted, the governor’s press office said only that some of those justifications are drawn “from the references [Statement of Motives] contained in Act 156 of 2025” and, for the rest, referred the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) to the governor’s remarks at a news conference held Monday.
At that event, the governor argued that 10 or 15 days is not enough time to complete a request “if we have 3.2 million Puerto Ricans requesting different information,” something that is practically impossible.
“What this [new law] channels is how they are going to request [the information], who has the right to request it, to give the press priority so they can request that information. It is not limited to the public, but it gives the press much more power to request that information,” the governor said at that news conference.
That assertion is false, first because Puerto Rico’s case law establishes that any person has the right to access public information, and second because the legislation neither prioritizes nor grants additional powers to the press.
“I don’t know what bill she read. I don’t know whether she is being advised incorrectly, that could also be the case. There is no priority for the press. Everyone has the right to access that [public] information,” said attorney Kevin Rivera Medina, spokesperson for the Puerto Rico Committee for Human Rights.
The alleged ‘confusion’
In the news release announcing that, with the governor’s signature, SB 63 became Law 156 of 2025, La Fortaleza — the governor’s office — repeated what the Statement of Motives of the new legislation says: “Some of its provisions have generated confusion in the legal community, the citizenry, members of the press, and the government entities that are required to comply with the provisions of this Act (141 of 2019).”
When the CPI asked La Fortaleza what backed up the governor’s statements, her press officer, Marieli Padró, acknowledged it was a simple copy-and-paste from the bill. “As for her explanation, I refer you to the bill’s sponsors,” she wrote.
However, none of the written testimony submitted to the House and Senate by four government agencies, or by entities such as the Puerto Rico Bar Association, the Environmental Law Clinic of the Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, the Journalists Association, the Overseas Press Club, the CPI or GFR Media, showed any confusion about how the existing law is implemented.
The governor’s statements are wrong in that they repeat the bill’s false premise about alleged confusion among journalists, attorneys and the public regarding the procedures for requesting access to public information under the Transparency Act.
The alleged surge in lawsuits
According to La Fortaleza, clarifying Act 141 will reduce lawsuits seeking access to information.
“This has led to a considerable number of lawsuits, which could be unnecessary if the government had clearer rules for enforcing its mandate,” the governor’s office said in its release.
“Many times, we find that we have so many information requests that there is no way for the government to comply with them on time. And what does that lead to? It leads people to have to go to court,” the governor added Monday, without offering any statistics to back up her claim. In fact, such data do not exist because nearly all agency and municipal websites fail to record the number of monthly information requests or their status, as required by Act 141 of 2019.
Attorney Luis José Torres Asencio, director of the Access to Information Project at the Legal Aid Clinic of the Interamerican University School of Law, said the increase in lawsuits filed against the government of Puerto Rico is due to the growing lack of response from agency information officers and the imposition of additional requirements beyond what the law mandates, such as demanding that citizens complete extra forms on top of their original requests.
“These lawsuits are not the result of a lack of clarity, of ambiguity, or of unclear criteria in the law. They are the result of government inaction,” said Torres Asencio, who has gone to court dozens of times on behalf of the clinic’s clients to force the government to hand over requested records.
In fact, the professor noted that before Act 141 of 2019 was enacted, the response rate to information requests was higher. The amendments to the statute will further delay disclosure by extending the deadline for providing information to a maximum of 50 business days.
The new law allows agencies to classify information as confidential through internal regulations, authorizes them to reject requests if the information is spread across several case files, and eliminates the obligation to provide data in the formats requested by the applicant. It also eliminates protections for the requester’s identity.
The measure’s approval also politicizes the process of obtaining data by requiring that agency heads be notified of every information request, the attorney warned.
“This is how authoritarian governments behave, not governments that call themselves democratic,” Torres Asencio said.
Since the premise that “there are so, so many information requests” has not been substantiated, nor that there is a “considerable number of lawsuits” caused by confusion, these statements are deemed false.
Technology does not guarantee access to information
In its press release, La Fortaleza also claimed that the new law includes “the use of accessible technological tools as an alternative for meeting information requirements.”
That claim is also inaccurate because, even if an applicant is referred to government entities’ websites, there is no guarantee that the requested information is published, updated or easy to access.
Act 156 of 2025 states that “a large volume of requests submitted under the Law are for information that is already published and accessible to the public through the official electronic portals of the corresponding government entities,” and cites as examples the contracts available on the Office of the Comptroller’s website, as well as laws and regulations published in the Sistema Único de Trámite Legislativo, the legislature’s online system for tracking bills and regulations.
None of the government entities that testified before the House of Representatives and the Senate said that was the case, the CPI found after reviewing the statements submitted by the State Elections Commission, the Office of Court Administration, the Office of the Inspector General and the Department of Justice.
By contrast, Issel Masses, executive director of the organization Sembrando Sentido, noted that the state and municipal websites her organization has analyzed often do contain information, but it is inaccessible, “or the information they share is minimal or very well hidden.”
“They also do not have complete or accurate information, which is another problem: many of these records have enormous data issues,” she added, referring to the reliability of public data.
The law does not mention any new tool, if one exists, for accessing public information, nor does it provide support for the claim that a large portion of requests to agencies are for information already posted on their websites.
Verdict
Given that no attorneys, journalists, academics or citizens reported confusion when requesting public information; that lawsuits under the Transparency Act stem from government inaction; and that none of the amendments prioritize or grant special privileges to journalists, the conclusion is that all the premises set out in La Fortaleza’srelease, as well as the governor’s statements, are false.
This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.
