By Alfonso Rodriguez

SAN JUAN – The reform of the Puerto Rican legislature currently underway seeks to reduce by almost half the number of lawmakers, one of the chief objectives of the administration of Gov. Luis Fortuño.

Fortuño’s electoral program includes reducing the legislature, a body he described as sluggish and a drain on the public treasury.

Fortuño, leader of the pro-statehood PNP, has given the Special Commission for Legislative Reform the task of preparing a bill that should be ready before Oct. 15, the panel’s chairman, Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock, said.

The project will aim to modify a legislature currently made up of 27 senators and 51 representatives.

It also plans to eliminate the payment of per diems to lawmakers and to reduce the length of the annual sessions.

With regard to the steps that must be taken, McClintock has already indicated that a referendum on a constitutional amendment could be held that would permit the legislature to be modified.

McClintock recalled that in 2005 a referendum was held to find out whether the electorate would support a possible fusion of the two legislative chambers. But turnout was too low – only 200,000 voters took part – for the result to have any weight.

He said that his committee would study different proposals, after making it clear that the reform project already approved by the Senate is not the only model to be considered.

Senate leader Thomas Rivera Schatz has presented a reform bill that would reduce from 78 to 42 the total number of lawmakers.

The Senate, under Rivera’s bill, would go from 27 to 13 members, while in the House of Representatives the number would drop from the current 51 to 29.

The reform proposed by Rivera would have an estimated savings of more than $2.5 million just on members’ salaries in the two chambers.

Fortuño’s agenda, which includes freezing lawmakers’ salaries for the next four years, seeks to energize operations in the two chambers.

For his part, the leader of the main opposition party PPD, Hector Ferrer, doubted that the current legislature will approve a reform whose effect would be to put the members’ own seats and salaries in jeopardy.

Ferrer said that the solution to the legislature’s problems includes eliminating the full-time lawmaker along with one of the two annual sessions and imposing a unicameral system. EFE