Two prominent Republican committee chairmen are asking for information from Whitefish Energy and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority about a controversial contract the two parties signed to repair Puerto Rico’s electric grid.
Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers asking for documents and a briefing from Whitefish, a small Montana firm that secured a $300 million contract to rebuild 100 miles of power infrastructure across the island.
Separately, Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, on Thursday requested that Ricardo Ramos, PREPA’s executive director, provide documents to explain how Whitefish landed the contract.
The requests by Walden and Bishop escalate concerns expressed by Republicans and Democrats about the size of the contract and scale of the job awarded to Whitefish, a company that had two full-time employees the day Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.
“In light of the questions that have been raised about your company’s involvement in recovery efforts, however, it is important to develop a clear understanding of the facts. Therefore, to assist the committee with our ongoing oversight of hurricane response and recovery efforts, we request Whitefish provide a briefing for committee staff,” Walden wrote to the company, asking for a briefing by Nov. 9.
Joining Walden on that request are Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee; Energy Subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.; Energy Subcommittee ranking member Bobby Rush, D-Ill.; and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette, D-Colo.
The lawmakers also asked for a copy of contract.
Bishop, who is visiting Puerto Rico Thursday, demands that Ramos provide documents to “show under what circumstances PREPA has authority to deviate from normal contracting and procurement processes.”
Instead of activating “mutual aid” arrangements with other utilities, PREPA decided to hire Whitefish, even though other mutual aid agreements in Florida, Texas, and many other states have helped U.S. utilities rebuild following natural disasters.
Those agreements allow out-of-state utility workers to quickly arrive on the scene after a disaster. But the American Public Power Association, the trade organization that coordinates mutual aid for municipally owned utilities, said it never received a request for aid from Puerto Rico.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has already demanded an investigation by appropriate inspectors general into how Whitefish, which is from the same small town as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, earned the power contract.
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, asked the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday to investigate.
On Wednesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the chairwoman of that committee, called for an investigation and promised to examine efforts in Puerto Rico to rebuild the grid at an upcoming hearing.
Zinke and Whitefish have both denied the secretary was involved in arranging the contract.
Whitefish says it has 300 contract workers in Puerto Rico, with about 15 or 20 more arriving each day.
Ramos also has defended the contract, saying Whitefish was the first “available to arrive and they were the ones that first accepted terms and conditions for PREPA.”
“The doubts that have been raised about Whitefish, from my point of view, are completely unfounded,” Ramos said this week.
