Puerto Rico Morning Brief Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Ponce Mayor Marlese Sifre Rodríguez said she was deeply outraged after dead dogs and cats were found inside several trash bags along Highway PR-132. The bags were at kilometer 24.6, near the entrance to the La Providencia neighborhood in Ponce. In written remarks on Tuesday afternoon, November 10, she called the discovery unacceptable and said there is no possible justification for abandoning the animals’ bodies this way. She asked what happened, how the animals died and who is responsible. According to preliminary Puerto Rico Police information, a citizen spotted the bags and found the dead animals inside as she was about to put them in a container.

LUMA Energy confirmed load shedding across Puerto Rico because of insufficient generation, with 31,111 customers without electricity at 4:40 PM on Tuesday, November 10. Of those customers, 26,032 had outages not classified as planned improvements, and 5,079 were affected by scheduled grid work. The customers without power made up 2.12% of LUMA’s 1,468,223 registered customers.

A bill in Puerto Rico’s Legislature would let employees who receive tips decide whether to keep the money customers give them or share it with co-workers. Employers could not dictate how the tips are distributed. The measure seeks to protect the consumer’s wishes, since customers decide whom to recognize for service, and the worker’s right to decide what to do with tips. As explained during the legislative process, employees could take part voluntarily in a tip pool, known as a "pote," or keep their tips individually. Workers could change their decision.

The Municipal Revenue Collections Center (CRIM) has asked Puerto Rico’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to seek approval from the Financial Oversight and Management Board for a disbursement of about $13.6 million. The money would compensate municipalities for revenue lost by exempting prescription medications from the island’s inventory tax. In a November 6 letter to OMB Executive Director Orlando C. Rivera Berríos, CRIM Executive Director Javier García Cintrón said the exemption under Act 78-2025 has cut municipal revenues by $13.62 million since it took effect. The letter states that no municipality would receive more or less than the amount it stopped collecting.

Jean Peña Payano, the secretary of Public Affairs, neither confirmed nor denied whether Suzanne Roig Fuertes, secretary of the Department of the Family, is away on vacation leave. Asked on the program "En Récord" about versions circulating that she is on vacation, Peña Payano answered "Tengo que corroborar," meaning "I have to verify." Roig Fuertes said the vacations of agency heads are handled directly by the Governor’s secretariat, headed by Norma Burgos.

Nearly 1,000 former Encanto Restaurants employees have registered on Puerto Rico’s unemployment portal, Labor Secretary María del Pilar Vélez Casanova said. The company closed about 180 KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and IHOP locations across the island. The closures affected between 2,600 and 2,700 workers. Laid-off employees attended a recruitment and support services fair on Tuesday, November 10, at the Palacio de Recreación y Deportes in Mayagüez. There they were helped to apply for unemployment and met dozens of employers and work agencies offering jobs in restaurants, hospitals, construction and real estate.