
Puerto Rico Cancels Whitefish Energy Contract to Rebuild Power Lines - pitaa
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/us/whitefish-cancel-puerto-rico.html
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Johnny555
Was the contract award really corrupt? The company is doing work now, claims
to have over 300 employees on the ground and doing work and has accrued $20M
worth of expenses (supposedly).

If the contract withholds payment until deliverables are met, (and since they
apparently haven't paid the $20M in expenses yet that appears to be the case,
it wasn't a $300M lump sum payment), then the contract could have been legit,
but expensive as emergency services contracts often are. Texas and Florida are
still rebuilding after their hurricanes so it's not like there are a lot of
power company linesmen looking for work.

Or is it buyers remorse where the government signed the first contract that
seemed like it'd get workers on the ground faster, and now they think they
overpaid?

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zimpenfish
> Was the contract award really corrupt?

I can't speak to the actual legal definitions of that but the optics are
incredibly bad - e.g "Zinke [Interior Secretary], a former Montana
congressman, knows Whitefish chief executive Andy Techmanski, and Zinke’s son
had a summer job at a Whitefish construction site."

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annerajb
Here in Puerto Rico the explanations given by the current Executive director
of the Puerto Rico power authority have been contradictory and confusing, to
say the least.

He gave varied versions on how they started talking, who initiated the
communication the dates, etc...

I really suspect there is something awry with the contracting process
something tells me we will know soon who really recommended that company and
why did they not try getting a no advance contract from the other company like
the american utility association people.

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xorgar831
wow, so we're against villains now?

