How Does a 2 Person Firm in Montana Get a $300 Million Contract to Restore Electricity in Puerto Rico?

Oh – Company From Same Town as Sec. Of Interior

The Washington Post is reporting that a large part of the effort to help Puerto Rico recover is a big contract that has been given to a firm from Montana to rebuild the electrical grid.

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 island’s electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

Okay, that sounds good. Oh, maybe not.

Whitefish officials have said that the company’s 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. The company acknowledges it had only two full-time employees when Maria struck but says its business model calls for ramping up rapidly by hiring workers on short-term contracts.

Wow, two people. How does a company like that get a contract? Well start with a no-bid situation. Then add this.

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, Zinke’s office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where “everybody knows everybody.” One of Zinke’s sons “joined a friend who worked a summer job” at one of Techmanski’s construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a “flagger.”

Zinke’s office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.

Well if you believe that we have a bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn for you to buy. But wait, was there any alternative?

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico’s 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.

“The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish,” said Susan F. Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies. “I’m scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.”

Alright, if things turn out well and this company does a fantastic job in restoring electricity to Puerto Rico this Forum will bed the first to admit we were wrong and that the decision to engage Whitefish was the right one. But our expectations are that a year from now an investigation will find massive corruption and incompetence. Why? The people in government are all doing things to enrich themselves, the public be damned. And that is a non-partisan plague.