A small Montana firm with just two employees before Zinke awarded them the contract, has been hired to fix Puerto Rico’s devastated electrical grid. The firm, Whitefish Energy, is based in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown, not surprisingly. Also not surprisingly, Carmen Yulin Cruz isn’t standing for it. The Hill:
The mayor of Puerto Rico’s largest city is calling for a contract to fix the island’s hurricane-ravaged electrical grid to be “voided” after it was awarded to a small Montana firm.
Whitefish Energy last week signed a $300 million contract to help overhaul the island's grid following Hurricane Maria. The company is only two years old and had just two employees when the territory's utility, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), signed the contract. It is based in the Montana hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz told Yahoo News in an interview published Wednesday that the contract is “alarming."
“The contract should be voided right away and a proper process which is clear, transparent, legal, moral and ethical should take place,” she continued.
“It seems like what the Puerto Rican people are going to be paying for, or the American people are going to be paying for, is an intermediary that doesn’t know what is at stake here and that really has to subcontract everything. … What we need is somebody that can get the job done and that has the expertise to get the job done.”
This is just adding insult to injury on Zinke’s part — but then the Trump administration excels at just that, doesn’t it?