P.R. Laws tit. 25, § 164
All officers of the departments and agencies of the Executive Branch of the Government and of the public corporations, in addition to any other person appointed deputy pursuant to law, regulation or administrative plan to exercise all of the powers and discharge the duties of the office, shall designate, for the administrative organization of their respective departments, agencies and public corporations, emergency interim successors and specify their line of succession. The officers shall revise said line of succession so that the designations made under this chapter be kept up to date. Emergency interim successors shall be designated in a sufficient number so that at no time will there be, if possible, within the administrative organization of the corresponding government entity, less than three or more than seven interim successors in the different departments, agencies or public corporations. When the administrative organization of the corresponding entity does not permit the designation of this number of emergency interim successors, it shall be done in such a manner as to guarantee the continuity of the essential services rendered by the organization.
In the event that any officer or his substitute is unavailable following an attack, the powers of said officer shall be exercised by his emergency interim successor in the previously established line of succession. The emergency interim successor shall exercise the powers and discharge the duties of the office until the Governor designates a successor or incumbent, or until said officer or his substitute, or the successor that precedes him in the line of emergency interim succession, is available to exercise or resume, as the case may be, the duties and powers of his office.
As to the Secretaries of the Executive Branch of the Government, or agency heads, and administrative or executive directors of public corporations who are appointed by the Governor or by the boards of directors of said public corporations, the line of emergency interim succession shall be established by the Governor of Puerto Rico or the person to whom he may delegate. In this case the line of succession to be established shall be extended to not more than five persons within each department, agency or public corporation.
Emergency interim successors, during the time they exercise the duties and powers of the office they are to discharge provisionally, shall do so with the same salary of the office they regularly hold in their respective departments, agencies and public corporations.
History —June 6, 1963, No. 55, § 4.