William Villafañe

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William Ely Villafañe Ramos is a member at-large of the Puerto Rico's Senate. He is also a former Chief of Staff and Secretary of Government (2017-2018).

Attorney William Ely Villafañe Ramos was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico on June 16th, 1977. The son of Ada Irma Ramos Medina, a public school teacher  whom is now retired and William Villafañe Andújar, a former baseball player, is the proud father of two sons. Villafañe Ramos is married to a Scholar Psychologist .

Before becoming a lawyer, Villafañe Andújar studied at Bernardo González Colón Elementary School,  Francisco Ramos Junior High School and Luis Muñoz Rivera High School; all of them located in his beloved municipality of Utuado, Puerto Rico.  An alumnus of the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico, in which he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration,  majoring in Accounting, he later attended the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico School of Law, from which he obtained a Juris Doctor.

Being a practicing catholic, William served as a missioner, speaker and counselor on spiritual retreats.  Also, following his parents’ example, he became a community leader as well as a passionate baseball player and fan.

In the political arena, in 1995 he served as President of the New Progressive Party’s Youth in Utuado. Further, he was the President and founder of the Pro-Statehood University Students in Action movement at the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. In 2002, he was elected President of the State Youth. During 2004 he was a member of the Platform Committee of the New Progressive Party. Later on, he acted as Operations Director for “Plan for Puerto Rico”.  In 2016 he was designated Secretary General of the New Progressive Party.  

Also, he contributed to the well-being of the island as Legislative Assistant at the Treasury Committee of the House of Representatives (1999), Administrator of the Commission of Public Service (2000), Director of the Legislative Committees on Housing and Urban Development, Comptroller’s Reports and Families and Communities (2005), Advisor to agencies and government departments such as the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, Office of the Commissioner of Municipal Αffairs and the Authority for Housing Financing (2010) and Chief Executive of the Commission for Public Service (2013).  Also, in 2017,  he was appointed Chief of Staff by Governor Ricardo Rosselló Nevares.

Attorney Villafañe Ramos was elected Senator at-large in 2019 as a candidate of the New Progressive Party. In said year he was sworn-in and appointed President of the Committee on Energy as well as of the Public-Private Alliances Committee. In 2020, he was re-elected and appointed member of the Committee on Designations. Treasury Committee, Federal Affairs and Oversight Board Committee, Committee on Compliance and Restructuring, Committee on Economic Development, Essential Services and Consumer Affairs and the Committee on the Development of the Southern Central Region.

In less than two years serving as Senator, Villafañe Ramos has presented important bills, such as Act 39-2020, which forbade the interruption of basic services to the public during the pandemic. He is also the author  of Act 56-2020, which guaranteed the applicability of the coverage of the “Puerto Rico Workers Compensation Act” to certain employees who get infected with COVID-19, both in the public and private sectors, while  performing their duties; as well as being the author of a bill that enabled the extension of the terms to continue ”

In order to avoid the imposition of additional tax charges to the people, he made amendments to the “Act of the Puerto Rico Gaming Commission”, in order to find new ways of collecting and make its implementation viable. Also, he presented legislation intended to amend the “Internal Revenue Code for a New Puerto Rico”, to provide a greater annual tax exemption to adoptive parents of children under the custody of the Department of the Family and also provide a reimbursement credit to tax payers with dependents with physical or mental disabilities; and to exempt correctional officers of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of paying taxes over extra hours worked.

He also promoted legislation that allowed veterinarians from other jurisdictions to come to Puerto Rico and provide free of charge services for spaying/neutering and treatment of animals in events held across the island, known as “spayathons”. Further, he presented legislation to protect the environment, which would make a crime the theft, traffic of, or damage to the coral reefs. He also promoted the amendment of the “Education Reform Act” to include in the curriculum of the school system ‘Education in Humanity’, to foster compassion, respect, empathy and inclusion of both animals and the environment; establish the Excursions and Educational Experiences Program to promote the study of and visits to our historical places.

Also, he presented legislation to allow employees to donate blood using the hours accrued to medical leave. Further, he presented legislation that would create the “Act for the Preferred Acquisition of Confiscated Vehicles” to regulate the processes  that would apply to all branches of the government, as well as to municipalities, when acquiring vehicles or other means of transportation.

Villafañe Ramos is the author of Act 104-2020, which extends to truckers and carriers the protections against unjust dismissal or retaliation for claiming their rights. He is also the author of a bill, today known as Act 48-2020, which increases the benefits for the surviving spouse and the dependents of an officer killed in the line of duty, as well as the benefits regarding funeral costs.

“La vida humana es breve cuando nos singularizamos en la estrechez del presente.  La cotidianeidad nos reduce al egoísmo y enajena.  Por otro lado, mucho más vive el que en tan corto espacio logra conocerse a sí mismo; porque reconoce los cientos de generaciones que le definieron su físico, su intelecto, su herencia, su cultura, su entorno y hasta su suerte”.

“Human life is brief when we focus on the narrowness of the present. Every day life reduces us to selfishness and alienates us. On the other hand, the one who gets to know him or herself in such short time lives more; as he or she recognizes the hundreds of generations that defined his or her physique, heritage, culture, environment and even his or her luck.”

Villafañe is well known as a pro-statehood leader in Puerto Rico. He is a former Secretary-General (2016) of the New Progressive Party (PNP in Spanish), the only pro-statehood party in Puerto Rico. On the 2020 plebiscite, he coordinated the efforts to achieve the victory of the statehood option (53%).

Villafañe won his chair as senator at-large on November 16, 2019. On November 2020, he was re-elected, with the most votes of his party fellows, as senator at-large for a new four-year-term.

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