RYAN ZINKE’S NEIGHBOR LANDS $300 MILLION CONTRACT TO FIX PUERTO RICO’S POWER GRID
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/ryan-zinke-neighbor-puerto-rico-power-contractOCTOBER 24, 2017
Whitefish Energy had only two full-time employees when the hurricane hit. But what it lacks in experience it makes up for in ties to the Trump administration.
Deespite Donald Trump’s glowing assessment of his administration’s recovery effort in Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory is still in the throes of a major humanitarian crisis wrought by Hurricane Maria. Clean water remains in short supply, and nearly 80 percent of the island is still without power. To make matters worse, the commonwealth is in such a perilous financial situation that it is expected to run out of cash by the end of October.
Despite all that, The Washington Post reports that the territory’s state-owned electrical utility awarded a two-year-old company from Montana, which at the time of the hurricane had only two full-time employees, a $300 million contract to restore its electrical grid. Even more curiously, the company, Whitefish Energy, is based in the hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who knows the owner, Andy Techmanski, and whose son worked a summer job at one of Techmanski’s construction sites.
Both Techmanski and Zinke deny that the Cabinet official had any role in helping Whitefish secure the contract, which makes the power authority’s decision odd at best. For one thing, in hiring Whitefish, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, chose not to activate the “mutual aid” agreements it has with other utilities, an arrangement that enabled Florida to bring in thousands of workers to restore power immediately after Hurricane Irma hit. (According to the Post, PREPA “has not replied to offers of assistance from mutual-aid partners.” For another, Whitefish, which had only two employees the day Maria made landfall, seemingly lacks the credentials to tackle such a project—and that’s putting it mildly.
There’s also the matter of how much Whitefish is charging, given that Puerto Rico is bankrupt. According to the contract, the hourly rate for a site supervisor is $330 while that of a “journey lineman” is $227.88. Subcontractors, who make up the bulk of the company’s workforce, cost $462 per hour for a supervisor and $310.04 for a lineman. Nightly accommodations are $332 per worker, and food is nearly $80 a day. The Post notes that only eight contracts over $20 million have been approved for Puerto Rico by FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, and half of those have been for shipments of food and bottled water....
