weather.com: (the last two paragraphs are stupid...weather.com has a long way to go to catch up to major media news outlets when it comes to trying to make insignificant **** sound outrageous....the rest of it is going to be interesting...and entertaining for a few days...and then its going to be interminably tedious)
At a Glance
- Members of Congress are asking for more information about the $300 million contract awarded to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's neighbor.
- A Zinke staffer says the secretary didn't assist Whitefish Energy in either getting or executing the contract.
- The company is getting paid $309 an hour for each journeyman line worker, almost 10 times the average rate of such worker in the United States.
- It's also getting a daily reimbursement of $332 for housing and $79 for food for each worker.
Lawmakers across Capitol Hill demanded answers Tuesday to questions swirling around a $300 million contract to restore power in Puerto Rico that was awarded to a father-and-son company based in Montana. When they got the contract, they were the company’s only two employees. But they had ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Zinke and representatives for the company, Whitefish Energy Holdings LLC, denied Zinke took any steps to help the company get the contract, although they acknowledged Whitefish reached out to Zinke by email after the contract was signed trying to enlist his help in getting Energy Secretary Rick Perry to expedite deployment of a group of Tennessee line workers to Puerto Rico to help with the work.
A Zinke staffer, who spoke only on condition she not be identified, said Zinke received a single email from Whitefish, did not respond and took no actions to assist Whitefish in either getting or executing the contract.
“The Secretary always politely listens when citizens and the small business community approach him with concerns and ideas,” the staffer wrote in an email. “Neither the Secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company.”
Ken Luce, a spokesman for Whitefish, said the Tennessee line workers were never deployed.
But ties between Zinke and Whitefish founder Andrew Techmanski prompted Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to call on the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to investigate the contract. Another lawmaker wrote to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) demanding strict oversight of the contract.
“Recent news reports have suggested that a contract pertaining to electric power transmission may not have been properly vetted,” Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to FEMA administrator Brock Long and José B. Carrión, chairman of a federally mandated financial oversight board for Puerto Rico. “Given such concerns and that federal funds are being used for this contract, I am worried that taxpayers and residents of Puerto Rico could be short-changed.”
These and other calls from lawmakers were prompted partly by the unusual way in which the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) awarded the contract to Whitefish. Normally when a disaster knocks out power, as occurred across Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck Sept. 20, the stricken jurisdiction activates mutual aid agreements with other public utilities. Their deep resources and experience allow them to rush line workers, bucket trucks and other equipment to the area.
But PREPA turned to Whitefish instead with little vetting or any significant bidding process.
“Congress needs to understand why the Whitefish contract was awarded and whether other, more cost-effective options were available,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., wrote in a statement released Tuesday.
Luce, the Whitefish spokesman, said the company will cooperate with any congressional investigations.
“The question should be why is Whitefish getting things done on the island today and nobody else is working here yet?” he said.
Typically, FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would be expected to take the lead and supervise contracting associated with restoration efforts. But both have distanced themselves from the Whitefish contract, with the Corps stating forcefully it had nothing to do with the awarding of the contract or supervision of the work. This, too, has raised concerns among lawmakers.
It wasn’t until last week that FEMA and the Army Corps announced their first major contract to repair the island’s transmission lines – a $240 million contract with Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corporation. The announcement came roughly three weeks after Maria ripped through the heart of the island as a Category 4 hurricane, destroying the country’s electrical grid and leaving most of the island without power. An estimated 80 percent of the island is still without power.
An addendum attached to the PREPA-Whitefish contract shows that the company is getting paid $309 an hour for each journeyman line worker and a daily reimbursement of $332 for housing and $79 for food for each worker. That hourly rate is almost 10 times the average rate for a journeyman line worker in the United States, according to the website Payscale.com.
Whitefish spokesman Luce said the compensation figures were reasonable given the gravity and challenge of getting the job started quickly under very difficult circumstances. About 300 mostly contract Whitefish workers are on the ground in Puerto Rico today, with 20 or 30 more coming in daily, Luce said, adding that the number will top out at 1,000.
Whitefish takes its name from the quaint timber and railroad town where the company is based out of the residence of its founder, Techmanski. Whitefish also is Zinke’s hometown. The two men know each other, perhaps unsurprising for a town of 6,300.
“They both live in a small town where everyone knows everyone,” the Interior staffer wrote.
Techmanski, 40, is an entrepreneur with a background working on power lines. The only other person working for Whitefish when the contract was awarded almost a month ago was his father Mark, according to Luce, who added it’s common for power companies to “hire up” when they get a contract.
Zinke, who represented Montana’s at-large congressional district from 2015 to 2017, helped Techmanski with a previous business venture, according to a 2016 local newspaper article.
At the time, Techmanski was hoping to convert an abandoned Superfund site into a plant to manufacture electrical transformers in partnership with Comtrafo, a Brazilian transformer manufacturer that’s still backing Whitefish.
Hungry Horse News, which bills itself as “one of the few newspapers in America still published in a log building,” quoted Columbia Falls City Manager Susan Nicosia as saying Zinke’s office had “already reached out to her about the project.” Nicosia, who was traveling, could not be reached for comment. But the project never materialized.
In addition to Comtrafo, Whitefish is financially backed by two Dallas-based private-equity firms, HBC Investments and Flat Creek Capital, LP.
HBC Investments was founded by Joe Colonnetta. He and his wife Kimberly have been frequent contributors to Republican political causes over the years, according to the website Open Secrets, which compiles records of federal campaign finance data. The couple’s contributions since 1999 total roughly $140,000 and include $51,700 to the Republican National Committee and $10,000 to the Opportunity & Freedom PAC, which supported the presidential campaign of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who now is serving as energy secretary. The couple’s donations also include $2,700 to President Trump’s presidential campaign last year.
– Kevin Hayes contributed to this report.
