The mayor of San Juan wants to void the $300M contract awarded to a tiny Montana company to help rebuild Puerto Rico.
Here's why: pic.twitter.com/ZSUfSDp6yC
— Splinter (@splinter_news) October 25, 2017
Disaster capitalism at its “finest”!
Here's Trump-donor-financed company that won a $300m Puerto Rico contract apparently threatening the mayor of San Juan https://t.co/LPAZAVy36G
— Scream Thielman (@samthielman) October 25, 2017
We’ve got 44 linemen rebuilding power lines in your city & 40 more men just arrived. Do you want us to send them back or keep working?
— Whitefish Energy (@WhitefishEnergy) October 25, 2017
I’m beginning to think Kay has the right idea — we need to bust these bastids on (their all-too-) common theft and graft. Even people who “don’t keep up with politics” understand Trump’s crony Zinke handing a three-million-dollar contract to the neighbor that gave his teenage kid a job last summer…
Ryan Zinke may regret having tried to screw with Lisa Murkowski over healthcare. https://t.co/34by4ajYvd
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) October 25, 2017
Which makes it cute that Zinke thought he had power over her, rather than the other way around.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) October 25, 2017
The Washington Post reports:
Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board is moving to install an emergency manager at the island’s state-owned utility amid criticism of a $300 million contract it awarded to a small Montana energy firm for work on the territory’s crippled electrical grid.
The board said Wednesday that it intends to appoint Noel Zamot, a retired Air Force colonel and member of the oversight panel, to oversee daily operations of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
The decision comes as House and Senate Democrats called for an investigation into the utility’s agreement with Whitefish Energy. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) pledged to examine the grid-rebuilding efforts at an upcoming hearing of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which she chairs. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz on Tuesday told Yahoo News that the contract should be “voided right away.”…
Whitefish and the utility struck an agreement on Sept. 26, six days after Maria swept through, without a formal bidding process. About 80 percent of customers still have no electricity.
Under the contract, Whitefish is charging $330 an hour for a site supervisor and $227.88 an hour for a “journeyman lineman.” The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefish’s workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman.