The ministers are members of the executive council.
The governor is appointed by the president of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate for a term of four years, and associated with the governor is an executive council consisting of the secretary, treasurer, auditor, attorney-general, commissioner of the interior, commissioner of education, and five other members, all appointed in the same manner and for the same term as the governor.
The constitution requires that at least five of the eleven members of the Executive Council shall be native inhabitants of Porto Rico; in practice the six members who are also heads of the administrative departments have been Americans while the other five have been Porto Ricans.
The insular government, however, has created a seventh administrative department - that of health, charities and corrections - and requires that the head of this shall be chosen by the governor from among the five members of the Executive Council who are not heads of the other departments.
The Executive Council constitutes one branch of the legislative assembly; the House of Delegates the other.
