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Gov. Jenniffer González Colón reacted on Tuesday to the hiring of the former La Fortaleza deputy chief of staff for energy affairs, Francisco Berríos Portela, by Quanta Services, one of the parent companies of LUMA Energy.
“The Government Ethics Law is supposed to have prevented him from doing that,” the governor said in response to questions from the press. “We have to see under what concept he was given a dispensation, if there is a dispensation to do that function, unless it is that he was not an energy czar and that he was just another assistant, because if the position was for just another assistant in La Fortaleza for public policy, and not for an oversight agent — as in our case, which is by executive order — which is engineer Josué Colón, that obviously speaks to why this company was allowed to do whatever it wanted.”
“With this, imagine […]. The two people who supervised you [LUMA], one is from [the] Public-Private Partnerships [Authority], and the other, an assistant, did not do their job and now end up working with them [LUMA’s parent firm],” added González Colón, who was in Humacao at the ribbon-cutting for a new Stryker medical devices manufacturing plant. “I think that, unfortunately, time has proven me right.”
According to press reports (NotiCel), the Government Ethics Office approved the exemption for Berríos Portela — who until last December also served as chairman of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority governing board — to work at Quanta Services.
Meanwhile, the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) minority leader in the island House of Representatives, Héctor Ferrer Santiago, denounced the actions of the director of the Government Ethics Office (OEG by its initials in Spanish), Luis Pérez Vargas, for turning the agency into what he called “a protective shield for the lack of transparency, cronyism and conflicts of interest in the government.”
“While the people suffer blackouts and increases in the [electricity] bill, the former La Fortaleza deputy chief of staff for energy affairs now works with the LUMA matrix, endorsed by the Government Ethics Office,” Ferrer Santiago said in a written statement. “In other words, the same person who made decisions in the government that benefited LUMA is now collecting a check from them with the blessing of the OEG. There are no coincidences here. This shows that LUMA and the NPP [governing New Progressive Party] are pitcher and catcher.”
The legislator questioned how the OEG supports a scheme in which an official with decision-making power in the government suddenly becomes an employee of the same company that he was supposed to oversee.
“LUMA and the NPP are the same, and they do whatever they want, because they know they have someone to protect them,” Ferrer Santiago said.
He contended that the OEG has shown shady behavior in scandals that diminish confidence in public service, allowing officials to move, “without any problem,” from the government to a private company, and vice versa, thus creating a system “where revolving doors are the norm and not the exception.”
Ferrer Santiago insisted that the hiring of Berríos Portela is not an isolated case. Last week, the PDP denounced how La Fortaleza Chief of Staff Francisco Domenech maintains ties with lobbyists for the PREPA bonds, a complaint that the governor dismissed as part of a continuing pattern of politicking by the opposition party.
“This is not a coincidence or an oversight,” the lawmaker said. “The OEG, instead of supervising, has become the agency that opens the back door for officials to mock the country. There is no doubt about it. There are clear conflicts of interest, and the OEG turns a blind eye.”
