FEMA scandals post-Maria

| October 19, 2022

Tiffany Brown, 43, told FEMA in 2017 she could deliver 30,000,000 self-heating meals to devastation-wracked Puerto Ricans and was awarded a $156,000,000 contract. She actually delivered 50,000 meals, non-self-heating, and had her contract terminated. Seems her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, consisted of herself, yet promised to deliver 30 million meals using 210 trucks, none of which were contracted.

FEMA said that Brown submitted a proposal that her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, could assist and provide 10 million meals per day with 210 trucks. Brown’s proposal also said the trucks were equipped with the staff and tools needed to make the deliveries, according to investigators.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office claims that Brown did not have any suppliers or logistics set up when FEMA awarded her the contract.

Brown did receive 50,000 meals from a Georgia vendor, however, prosecutors said those meals were not self-heating.

“On October 11, 2017, Brown submitted to FEMA a voucher and supporting documentation (i.e., bills of lading) requesting a payment of $255,000 based on false representations that she had delivered 50,000 self-heating meals,” the office said.

The full articles can be read for more details at ABC News or MSN. She, or course, says she is a scapegoat.

You may remember another company FEMA contracted post-Maria, Whitefish Energy, who were excoriated for being emergency contractors who were claimed to pay ‘exhorbitant rates’ to their linemen and lost their contract.

After Hurricane Maria in September 2017, recovery efforts were marked by a different scandal involving the contractor Whitefish Energy. The company, which was based in former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s small hometown in Montana and which was only two years old at the time, reportedly charged exorbitant salaries for its linemen. The company, financed by a major Trump donor, had only two full-time employees at the time it landed its $300 million contract. Puerto Rico’s governor at the time, Ricardo Rosselló, canceled the contract in the face of the controversy.*

  Slate 

At least Whitefish had experience with major contracts before. And, as was pointed out at the time here on TAH, emergency repair contractors tend to have minimal full-time staff since their business is intermittent.

Side note – if you talk to anyone who has worked with contracted employees, you will find they get seemingly sky-high wages – until you remember the employees pay full FICA, any income taxes, health insurance out of pocket and often have zero job security. And whoever contracts those employees to a third party gets a nice add-on, too.

There was another company who mostly got little notice who DID break the procurement rules – they got busted paying bribes to FEMA contracting officials Ahsha Tribble and Jovanda Peterson, to get $1.8 billion in Maria business.

Tribble (above) was having an affair with Donald Keith Ellison of COBRA Acquisitions and received free trips, an apartment, credit card use, and shall we say “other considerations.” Peterson was given a (presumably lucrative) job with COBRA.

Ahsha Tribble, a deputy regional administrator, another former FEMA official, Jovanda Patterson, and Donald Keith Ellison, the former president of COBRA Acquisitions, were charged in a 15-count indictment.

Patterson, Tribble’s deputy chief of staff, steered contracts to COBRA and left FEMA in July 2018 for a job at the energy company, the court documents say.

The charges implied that Tribble, who oversaw the restoration of the island’s electrical system for FEMA, and Ellison were romantically involved and documented how they traveled together and often stayed in the same room between October 2017 and April 2019.

Ellison, who had a two contracts for recovery work from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), enticed Tribble with gifts, including a helicopter tour of the Caribbean island, helping her get an apartment in New York, hotel rooms in Fort Lauderdale and Charlotte, N.C., first-class air tickets from San Juan to New York, and use of his credit card, the indictment released Sept. 3 says.

In return, she used her influence to “secure favorable treatment” of COBRA by pressuring PREPA executives to speed-up payments to the company and assign work to Oklahoma-based COBRA that could have been done by PREPA workers.

NY Post

I think I have found the answer to how the government is still in operation: you would think with politicians spending money like a redneck lottery winner in a high end whorehouse, eventually they’d run out. Not if they don’t actually SPEND it –

As of this August, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has allocated roughly $28 billion in funding. Just $5.3 billion—less than one fifth—has been spent. Of that, the large majority was on emergency repair work such as debris removal. The amount spent on permanent projects like rebuilding roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and utilities was just $407 million. When it comes to the energy grid, the situation is even worse. FEMA has a $13.2 billion budget for utility projects post-Maria. Five years into the recovery, the amount spent on upgrading Puerto Rico’s utilities is just $40.3 million.

Vanity Fair

Sure seems like the contracting process has issues, doesn’t it? If you are only going to read one article, read the last one. Pretty damning indictment of a broken system on many levels.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Government Incompetence

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Devtun

Dadgum, Tribble is another Chlamydia Harris wannabe. Decent looks, and willingness to go heels up & drop to her knees gets a girl all sorts of goodies. Really stepped in it here though.

President Elect Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH Neande

“The Trouble With Tribble.”

I’ll be here all week.

Skivvy Stacker

Question: What kind of Bourbon does Quatrotriticallly make?

President Elect Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH Neande

Quatro = four?
So, a fourth of Bourbon?

Mustang Major

You win.

Skivvy Stacker

So, that’s how I can make zillions of dollars off the gubmint.
Just tell them that I can supply them with a million meals a day for immigrants for every person who comes across the southern border, regardless of whether or not I can do so, and I will get a gubmint contract. They won’t worry about it until AFTER I’ve gotten my zillions of dollars, and fed them into a bank that has a number instead of a name, and a Swiss Address instead of one in the good old U.S. of A.

Anonymous

You mean all I have to do is make some outlandish claim, hire a sub-contractor to carry it out and the gov’t will throw money at me?

MI Ranger

Only if you are a female minority owned business. The Government has certain requirements for veteran owned, minority, female….excetera
They can sub contract to whatever white guy businesses they want to!

Hack Stone

Just list your company as a proud but humble woman owned business, and you can make it rain. You may even earn enough to afford a door on your mailbox.

Skivvy Stacker

Oh hell….these days you could show up in person and say you identify as an African-American Rose Bush and they’d have to believe you.

Mustang Major

I met a guy at a Porsche dealership that started a COVID contact tracing company. Enough said.

JustALurkinAround

Heckuva job, Brownie!

MI Ranger

I for one am totally shocked…who would have thought that corrupt political aspirerers could posibly be responsible for poor contratual decisions and fraudulent activity!!?? 😱 

jeff LPH 3 63-66

Tribble is in trouble and a discrace to the Tribbles from outer space.

KoB

These pikers musta missed the Klintoon Krime Kartel seminar on how to steal aid money. A paltry $156 mil V $10 billion? Shoulda allocated at least 10% for The Big Guy.

Green Thumb

I wonder if All-Points logistics is in the mix!

This seems like Phildo’s bread and butter.

Roh-Dog

It pays to have friends… literally.

Tea, tax stamps, harbor. Some assembly required.

A Proud Infidel®™️

And these are just the ones sloppy enough to get caught, as long as they have the right Politicians and Bureaucrats paid off, they get away with it.

USMCMSgt (Ret)

Self heating meals? Like an MRE or something?

MCPO USN

I don’t understand the 210 trucks. Were they going to drive the meals to the ISLAND of Puerto Rico?