$300m Puerto Rico Recovery Contract Awarded to Tiny Utility Company Linked to Major Trump Donor
Source: The Daily Beast
A tiny utility company linked to a prominent Trump campaign donor has been awarded the massive contract to help rebuild the crippled island.
KEN KLIPPENSTEIN
10.24.17 7:29 AM ET
Puerto Rico has agreed to pay a reported $300 million for the restoration of its power grid to a tiny utility company that is primarily financed by a private-equity firm founded and run by a man who contributed large sums of money to President Trump, an investigation conducted by The Daily Beast has found.
Whitefish Energy Holdings, which had a reported staff of only two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria touched down, appears ill-equipped to handle the daunting task of restoring electricity to Puerto Ricos more than 3 million residents.
Much larger utilities are more commonly used following natural disasters on the scale of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last month.
The private-equity firm that finances Whitefish, HBC Investments, was founded by Joe Colonnetta, who serves as its general partner.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dollar300m-puerto-rico-recovery-contract-awarded-to-tiny-utility-company-linked-to-major-trump-donor
joshdawg
(2,648 posts)irisblue
(32,980 posts)Off to research now.
dalton99a
(81,515 posts)Laurian
(2,593 posts)They just continue to abuse their power and are never held accountable.
So disheartening.
SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)The blood of Puerto Ricans who died due to lack of electricity are on his kleptocratic hands.
Not Ruth
(3,613 posts)elmac
(4,642 posts)RICO RICO RICO Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
Turbineguy
(37,343 posts)dolts who contributed and voted for trump. Do they get a place at the trough or just empty promises?
Bengus81
(6,931 posts)How much you getting from these people next time around Trump?? Nothing but middle men to point the electric utility on PR to the problem and say go fix that. This is No different than an Oil company like Halliburton getting contracts to build military housing and prisons in Iraq. BILLIONS of $$$ in tax payer money handed out to make rich men richer.
There needs to be one HELL of an investigation into this graft.
mopinko
(70,127 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)able to do the job adequately. Those poor people. They voted overwhelmingly Democratic and against Rump and so don't deserve this. All of us who didn't vote the Democratic ticket own all this. What a shame they can't share the misery.
Well, as this miserable and despicable handling drags out toward 2018, perhaps at least some of it will penetrate the right wing news bubble, and maybe even shame some of those culpable on the left.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)DonViejo
(60,536 posts)SCantiGOP
(13,871 posts)And thousands are now relocating to Florida.
Louisiana was a leaning Democratic State until Katrina caused the permanent relocation of thousands of mainly minority voters from New Olreans to Texas. This same effect may lock in Florida to the Dem column.
ATL Ebony
(1,097 posts)There should be hell to pay for this.
B Stieg
(2,410 posts)"This for that" (something for something), the very definition of political corruption.
LonePirate
(13,424 posts)zaj
(3,433 posts)From the company Facebook page (seemingly launched the day they got the first award)...
https://www.facebook.com/WhitefishEnergy/photos/a.120427105290345.1073741828.120089515324104/120727938593595/?type=3
Botany
(70,516 posts)On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Whitefish Chief Executive Officer Andy
Techmanski is friends with Trump administration Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Moreover,
Whitefish is located in Zinkes hometown of Whitefish, Monatana.
*****
2 employees?
janterry
(4,429 posts)have no check on this kind of corruption?
We can blame trump and his comrades as much as we want. But it's clear that our system has too few checks on abuse.
Not Ruth
(3,613 posts)Tracer
(2,769 posts)Puerto Rico AGREED to hired this 3-man company?!?
What do they mean by "Puerto Rico"? Who did this? The Governor of PR?
What could possibly go wrong (or right).
TexasBushwhacker
(20,202 posts)Here's an article from WP.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-montana-firm-lands-puerto-ricos-biggest-contract-to-get-the-power-back-on/2017/10/23/31cccc3e-b4d6-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.e3476ed3d72a
"PREPAs executive director, Ricardo Ramos, and a spokesman did not respond to emails asking why the utility didnt activate the mutual-aid network. On a tour of the idled Palo Seco power plant, Ramos told reporters that Whitefish was the first company available to arrive and they were the ones that first accepted terms and conditions for PREPA.
Ramos said that the utility is completely content with the work Whitefish is doing. The doubts that have been raised about Whitefish, from my point of view, are completely unfounded, he added, saying that concerns about Whitefish were probably spread by jealous competitors.
Whitefish officials have said that the companys expertise in mountainous areas makes it well suited for the work and that it jumped at the chance when other firms were hesitating over concerns about payment."
I read elsewhere that one contender asked for $25 Million up front. That seems reasonable considering the scope of the project, but that may have been a road block for PREPA.
IronLionZion
(45,454 posts)why hire the best company for the job at the best price when you can just give sweetheart deals to your cronies? After all, it's the taxpayers' money, not Trump's.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,489 posts)I saw the article in the Flathead Beacon about the award of the contract, but there was no mention of who was behind it. Now I get it.
Two-year-old company brokered $300 million contract with islands electric utility
BY TRISTAN SCOTT // OCT 21, 2017
A Whitefish-based energy outfit is playing a key role in restoring power on the hurricane-ravaged island of Puerto Rico, a windfall for the relatively untested Montana company, whose CEO said it is well-equipped for such a massive undertaking in the rural and rugged region.
Officials with Whitefish Energy Holdings say the companys experience and expertise working in the Mountain West, and CEO Andy Techmanskis 20 years rebuilding transmission lines here, furnishes crews with a skillset uniquely tailored to meet the challenges of repairing and reconstructing electrical transmission infrastructure on the islands mountainous terrain, which Hurricane Maria rolled across last month, killing at least 49 people and leaving the majority of the island without power and in the dark.
Last month, the company signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) to repair and rebuild 100 miles of transmission lines on the western portion of the island, and hopes to start turning some of the lights back on in the coming days.
....
Formed in 2015 by Techmanski, Whitefish Energy began eying the former site of the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company as a potential campus to build a transformer manufacturing plant, in partnership with Brazil-based Comtrafo S.A., a leading transformer manufacturing firm. At the time, Techmanski estimated the company would need to generate $15 million to $20 million in backorders with regional utilities in order to justify the manufacturing center, which so far has not panned out.
There was this comment:
Sounds like a nice $300 million payoff to one of Zinke's friends:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-montana-firm-lands-puerto-ricos-biggest-contract-to-get-the-power-back-on/2017/10/23/31cccc3e-b4d6-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html
Like · Reply · 2 hrs
DFW
(54,405 posts)Cheney's Halliburton got just numbers of contracts from the Federal Government and the military for projects in Iraq, many of them contracts they never even had to compete for. And the Republican-controlled Congress never said a word. Halliburton's stock--of which Cheney had 200,000 $1 per share options at $19--went from $19 to $87 in a very short time, and SOMEBODY had to pay for the upkeep on his house on Kish. Anyone know how much is 200,000 X ($87-19-1)? Try $13,400,000. And that's just this one transaction.
Trump saw Cheney never had to answer for his corruption, so he figures (probably correctly) that he won't, either. Trump is right about one thing: he could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and he wouldn't lose a vote. I would add to that--he wouldn't lose a day of freedom, either, as long as Sessions is Attorney General. Sessions would probably have the guy Trump murdered charged posthumously for assault, and then suspend the sentence, provided the guy didn't rise from his grave.
FSogol
(45,488 posts)Snake Plissken
(4,103 posts)mahatmakanejeeves
(57,489 posts)Hat tip, edhopper: WP; Small Montana firm lands Puerto Ricos biggest contract to get the power back on
By Steven Mufson, Jack Gillum, Aaron C. Davis and Arelis R. Hernández October 23 at 9:29 PM
For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Ricos crippled electrical grid, the territorys state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall. ... The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the islands electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort. .... The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Ricos spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.
....
Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another but only, Zinkes office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where everybody knows everybody. One of Zinkes sons joined a friend who worked a summer job at one of Techmanskis construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a flagger. ... Zinkes office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved. ... Techmanski said in an interview that the contract emerged from discussions between his company and the utility rather than from a formal bidding process. He said he had been in contact with the utility two weeks before Maria discussing the what if scenarios of hurricane recovery. In the days after the hurricane, he said, it started to make sense that there was a need here for our services and others. ... On Thursday, Techmanski told CNN simply: We called each other. ... The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.
....
The House Committee on Natural Resources is examining Whitefishs role in Puerto Rico, said Parish Braden, a spokesman for the committee. The hiring of the little-known company has been noted by the trade publications Utility Dive and E&E News. ... The size and unknown details of this contract raises numerous questions, Braden said. This is one of many things the committee is taking a close look at as it continues to work with the resident commissioner, governors office, and oversight board to ensure Puerto Ricos recovery is robust, effective and sustained.
....
Under the contract, the hourly rate was set at $330 for a site supervisor, and at $227.88 for a journeyman lineman. The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefishs workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman. Whitefish also charges nightly accommodation fees of $332 per worker and almost $80 per day for food.
....
Hernández reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Steven Mufson covers energy and other financial matters. Since joining The Post, he has covered the White House, China, economic policy and diplomacy. Follow @StevenMufson. Follow @StevenMufson
Jack Gillum is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. Follow @jackgillum
Aaron Davis is a reporter for The Posts Investigative team. Follow @byaaroncdavis
Arelis Hernández covers Prince Georges County as part of The Washington Post's local staff. Follow @arelisrhdz
kimbutgar
(21,162 posts)mahatmakanejeeves
(57,489 posts)A House Committee with oversight of PR bankruptcy says it is concerned about deal. Lawmakers may be more concerned when they price tag:
Link to tweet
ATL Ebony
(1,097 posts)c-rational
(2,594 posts)for the people.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,489 posts)By Steven Mufson, Jack Gillum, Aaron C. Davis and Arelis R. Hernández October 23 at 9:29 PM
....
The House Committee on Natural Resources is examining Whitefishs role in Puerto Rico, said Parish Braden, a spokesman for the committee. The hiring of the little-known company has been noted by the trade publications Utility Dive and E&E News.
....
Hernández reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Steven Mufson covers energy and other financial matters. Since joining The Post, he has covered the White House, China, economic policy and diplomacy. Follow @StevenMufson. Follow @StevenMufson
Jack Gillum is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. Follow @jackgillum
Aaron Davis is a reporter for The Posts Investigative team. Follow @byaaroncdavis
Arelis Hernández covers Prince Georges County as part of The Washington Post's local staff. Follow @arelisrhdz
c-rational
(2,594 posts)but I fear the why. They are bought and complicit with exceptions like Rachael and Lawrence. Is there not a law which makes it illegal to use the public airwaves against the good of the country.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,489 posts)Also, I have not had cable TV since 1986, so I can't be sure. The people you mentioned appear on cable or satellite TV, do they not? Neither service is regulated by the FCC, which oversees broadcast TV.
Finally, I believe the Washington Post is regarded as mainstream media. In its market, the Flathead Beacon is also a member of the mainstream media.
Welcome to DU.
ATL Ebony
(1,097 posts)By selecting what is probably the most ill-equipped company in the country shows how abhorrent 45 really is to find the least qualified for this massive project (2 people TOTAL, really??) and PR is on the hook for $300M. Hopefully another company can step up to prevent this travesty.
not fooled
(5,801 posts)Halliburton/KBR redux.
From the WaPo article:
Same shit, different assholes.
JI7
(89,252 posts)pandr32
(11,588 posts)Only two full-time employees? Big Trump donor? Can we hurry up and march the deranged orange clown off to the guardhouse soon? People are dying and the U.S. is being ravaged and pillaged! Hurry up Congress!
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,034 posts)onenote
(42,714 posts)The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
The question is why.
https://weather.com/news/news/puerto-rico-power-whitefish-0
niyad
(113,342 posts)couldn't they at least PRETEND to do the correct thing?