Whitefish's No-Bid Puerto Rico Contract Spotlights Troubled FEMA Grants

The federal agency paying for a controversial no-bid, $300 million contract to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid has for years received scathing reports from government auditors for how it oversees the management of similar grants. Members of Congress from both parties have raised questions about the selection last week of Whitefish Energy Holdings LLC to lead the rebuilding of Puerto Rico’s hurricane-ravaged electrical grid. The two-year-old Montana-based company had just two employees prior to beginning its work in Puerto Rico. The contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is among the biggest yet awarded in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which slammed the U.S. territory Sept. 20 and knocked out electrical power. Prepa spokesman Carlos Monroig said Whitefish is getting paid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The inspector general of FEMA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, has repeatedly criticized the agency for lax oversight of grants. The office frequently recommends that FEMA withhold or claw back payments that didn’t follow federal regulations. FEMA oversees a vast web of disaster relief work: In September, there was $68 billion of ongoing FEMA grants spread across 653,000 projects, and multiple audits and reports by the inspector general show a pattern of problems in how these funds were being spent...more