When you’ve only got two employees, it
helps when “you know a guy”
A tiny Montana utility company that
received a $300 million contract to help restore power to Puerto Rico after its
electrical grid was devastated by Hurricane Maria is financed by major Trump
donors and run by a CEO friendly with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a series
of recent reports has revealed.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power
Authority’s granting of the huge contract to Whitefish Energy Holdings, a
two-year-old company that reportedly had two full-time employees when the
hurricane first hit, was first
reported by the Weather Channel last week.
The Washington Post and the Daily
Beast on Tuesday offered more details on the company’s backers.
The Post noted that
the firm is based in Zinke’s hometown and that its CEO, Andy Techmanski, is
friendly with the Interior secretary.
The Daily Beast reported that
Whitefish’s general partner maxed out donations to the Trump primary and
general election campaigns, as well as a Trump super PAC, in 2016.
That newly surfaced information has
raised eyebrows about just why Whitefish was awarded a contract to restore
electricity to hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rico residents.
The firm insists
that everything is above board, with both Zinke’s office and Techmanski told
the Post that the Interior secretary played no role in securing the contract.
But as multiple publications have noted, the type of work Whitefish will be doing is usually handled through “mutual aid” agreements with other utilities, rather than by for-profit companies, especially those of Whitefish’s exceptionally small size.
“The fact that there are so many
utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other
out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish,” Susan F.
Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department told the Post. “I’m
scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.”
In addition to Techmanski’s
relationship with Zinke, Joe Colonnetta, partner at Whitefish and founder of
HBC Investments, the private-equity firm that finances the energy company, is a
significant power player in Republican politics, according to the Beast.
Colonetta donated a total of $74,000
towards Trump’s presidential victory and $30,700 to the Republican National
Committee, the Beast reported.
His wife, Kimberly, separately gave $33,400 to
the RNC shortly after Trump’s win, and was photographed with Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson during
inauguration week, per the report.
Author Allegra Kirkland is a New York-based reporter for
Talking Points Memo. She previously worked on The Nation’s web team and as the
associate managing editor for AlterNet. Follow her on Twitter @allegrakirkland.