{"id":179793,"date":"2017-10-24T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T23:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/24\/corruption-much-4\/"},"modified":"2017-10-24T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T23:28:00","slug":"corruption-much-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/24\/corruption-much-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Corruption Much?"},"content":{"rendered":"
A company owned by a Trump donor which has just 2 employees, was just awarded a $300 million contract to rebuild the Puerto Rico power grid<\/a>.<\/div>\n

The outbreak of corruption makes the Katrina recovery effort look honest and competent:<\/p>\n

For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico\u2019s crippled electrical grid, the territory\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The company, Whitefish Energy<\/a>, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract <\/a>with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island\u2019s electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.<\/p>\n

Whitefish said Monday that it has 280 workers in the territory, using linemen from across the country, most of them as subcontractors, and that the number grows on average from 10 to 20 people a day. It said it was close to completing infrastructure work that will energize some of the key industrial facilities that are critical to restarting the local economy.<\/p>\n

The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the \u201cmutual aid\u201d arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities \u2014 including those in Florida and Texas recently \u2014 to recover quickly after natural disasters.<\/p>\n

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>
Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke<\/span><\/b>. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another \u2014 but only, Zinke\u2019s office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where \u201ceverybody knows everybody.\u201d One of Zinke\u2019s sons \u201cjoined a friend who worked a summer job\u201d at one of Techmanski\u2019s construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a \u201cflagger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zinke\u2019s office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.<\/span>

<\/span>
\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>
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. <\/p>\n

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company \u2014 which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million \u2014 was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.<\/span>

<\/span>
\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>
Kent McNellie, an investment professional at HBC, the Texas investment firm that is now the largest financier of Whitefish, said the company\u2019s experience reconstructing a one-mile power line destroyed in a wildfire in Washington state was more relevant to Puerto Rico\u2019s needs than is the experience of many companies on the mainland. The span in Washington included an elevation change of about 5,000 feet, and the terrain required crews and equipment to be delivered by helicopter.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

HBC investments, sounds familiar<\/a>  \u2026\u2026\u2026 Gee, I wonder why:<\/p>\n

The private-equity firm that finances Whitefish, HBC Investments, was founded by<\/a> Joe Colonnetta, who serves as its general partner.<\/p>\n

Federal Elections Commission data compiled by The Daily Beast shows Colonnetta contributed $20,000 to the Trump Victory PAC during the general election, $2,700 to Trump\u2019s primary election campaign (then the maximum amount permitted), $2,700 to Trump\u2019s general election campaign (also the maximum), and a total of $30,700 to the Republican National Committee in 2016 <\/span><\/b>alone. Colonnetta\u2019s wife, Kimberly, is no stranger to Republican politics either; shortly after Trump\u2019s victory, she gave $33,400 to the Republican National Committee, the maximum contribution permitted for party committees in 2016.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Nothing to see here, move along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A company owned by a Trump donor which has just 2 employees, was just awarded a $300 million contract to rebuild the Puerto Rico power grid. The outbreak of corruption makes the Katrina recovery effort look honest and competent: For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico\u2019s crippled electrical grid, the territory\u2019s state-owned utility has …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,505,364,485],"class_list":["post-179793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-disaster","tag-evil","tag-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}