Two top congressional Democrats want to know why a small power company, from a Trump administration official’s hometown with Trump campaign-friendly financiers, is in charge of restoring power to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.
The ranking Democrats on the House Committee on Natural Resources and House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which oversee FEMA, sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general Friday. They requested a probe into whether the $300 million contract Whitefish Energy Holdings reached with the Puerto Rico Electric and Power Authority (PREPA) is an “appropriate use of taxpayer dollars.”
“Normally, after a disaster that affects the electrical grid, the owner of the grid relies on mutual aid agreements to restore electricity. … In this instance, instead of activating mutual aid agreements, PREPA chose to contract with an intermediary to hire workers to restore electricity to the island,” Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR) wrote in the letter to Inspector General John Roth.
Among several things, the representatives want to know why a private company — which is only two years old and only had two full-time employees at the time the contract was awarded — was hired instead of a mutual aid group.
“Given that funding for this contract is envisioned to come from FEMA’s Public Assistance program, the American taxpayer must be assured that costs associated with this contract are eligible, fair and reasonable, especially given the availability of workers through a mutual aid agreement,” the letter said.
The two Democrats claimed threats made by a Whitefish spokesperson on Twitter, after the San Juan mayor criticized the contract, were “inappropriate conduct” and the comments were “insensitive to the citizens of San Juan and all of Puerto Rico, many of whom are still suffering without electricity, drinking water and other necessities.” The company later apologized on Twitter for its remarks.
Grijalva and DeFazio also asked the IG to look into whether there was any “political impetus” behind the agreement. Not only is Whitefish located in Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s hometown, Zinke’s son worked for Whitefish at one point. The financial backers of the power company are also major donors to the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign.
The two Democrats aren’t the only public officials who have raised concerns over the agreement.
Earlier this week, both the governor of Puerto Rico and the mayor of the U.S. territory’s capitol city spoke out about the contract. Friday morning, FEMA issued a statement saying it had “significant concerns” about the deal and said it would review how the contract was procured.
Read the letter below:
Good. This needs to be investigated, it stinks.
Unfortunately, the DHS IG was just hired as a “special consultant” by WhiteGuys Energy Holdings…
ETTD, so Whitefish will probably fold by the end of next year.
OT: Looks like we’re going to get Senator Romney after all.
Follow the money!
What’s funny is that if Hillary had won, we’d have been having endless investigations already of every dollar spent dealing with all three of these hurricanes, with conservative mouthpieces bleating about how Crooked Hillary was funneling all the money to her cronies and the media regurgitating it verbatim because bashing Hillary is always good for ratings.
And sadly, the people involved would somehow be just corrupt enough to give an air of legitimacy to the attacks while Hillary would only hunker down and wait out the attacks like she always does. And the real loser would be all of us; with hurricane survivors taking the biggest hit as conservatives insist that every dollar spent be offset by strangling kittens or something equally villainous.
I’ve said it before and I hope to keep saying it, it probably was for the best that Trump won. Conservatives have been forced to put their money where their mouths are and they’re being led by a mouthpiece that has no brain. Serves them right. They spent eight years trashing Obama and they’ve done far more in just ten months towards destroying themselves. They’re corrupt all the way to the top and it’s already eating them alive.