The chief executive of Puerto Rico’s troubled public electric company stepped down on Friday amid a two-month island-wide blackout and weeks of bruising public outcry over a costly contract to restore service, the New York Times reported. The resignation of Ricardo L. Ramos, the chief executive of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA, was effective immediately. The governor, Ricardo A. Rosselló, told reporters that he accepted the resignation because Ramos had become a “distraction.” “There is an investigation that we’ve called upon for the whole contracting situation,” Rosselló said. “The truth of the matter is that this decision was taken with the best interests of the people of Puerto Rico.” Ramos’s resignation caps a yearslong saga of dysfunction and mismanagement at PREPA, which filed for bankruptcy in July. Ramos, an engineer, had been at the helm of the company for six months when Hurricane Maria destroyed the island’s poorly maintained power grid on Sept. 20. He immediately came under withering criticism and congressional and federal review for awarding a $300 million contract to a small private company from Montana, Whitefish Energy Holdings, to help repair the grid. PREPA had agreed to pay $319 an hour for electrical linemen; the average salary in Puerto Rico for that work is $19 an hour. The authority later canceled the contract, even while defending it. Read more.
In related news, the White House asked Congress for $44 billion in hurricane aid, including funds designated for Texas and Florida, while most of Puerto Rico’s needs would be addressed in a future request, Bloomberg News reported. By delaying its full request for Puerto Rico aid, the White House move on Friday may diminish the chances that Congress will supply that aid in a December funding bill. The White House said that damage assessments haven’t been completed for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and a further request is planned. Texas would get less funding than it says it needs. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, asked for $61 billion to repair damage from Hurricane Harvey. Florida officials asked for billions in aid for the state’s citrus industry. Puerto Rico last week requested $94 billion in immediate aid to recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria, which left most of the 3.4 million residents without power. The biggest share of the funds, $31 billion, were to be used to rebuild homes, with another $18 billion requested for the electric utility, Governor Ricardo Rosselló said in a letter to President Donald Trump. Read more.
