WRONG AND STRONG: “I know nothing, nothing,” Gov. Kenneth Mapp will make the announcements tonight at a press conference.
[ad name=”HTML-68″]CHRISTIANSTED — Julio Rhymer will be named the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Nellon Bowry is retiring at OMB and Clinton Hedrington Jr., the current chief operating officer (COO) at the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA), will be named the acting executive director of WAPA, the Virgin Islands Free Press has learned.
Gov. Kenneth Mapp will make the announcements at his regularly-scheduled press conference at Government House tonight.
“Julio Rhymer wasn’t fired. He’s making a lateral move,” a source close to Government House said. “It won’t take WAPA long to find a permanent executive director. Who wouldn’t want to be the CEO of WAPA after two category 5 storms (laughs). Rhymer had no training in electrical distribution systems and it was beginning to show after the hurricanes. But he’ll be taken care of like everyone else in Mapp’s favored Cabinet.”
Rhymer is the former chief financial officer of WAPA and will return to his primary area of expertise — finance — as the director of OMB.
The move came up in executive session on Friday night when the WAPA governing board met in secret to discuss Rhymer’s departure.
He sent a letter to the board indicating that he had accepted the position with OMB and could no longer serve as WAPA’s executive director.
News of Rhymer’s departure filtered out of the WAPA governing board executive session with a source saying that he had been “fired” because of performance issues at the authority — three months after Hurricane Irma — less than 50 percent of the territory has been reconnected to electricity.
But another source said that WAPA was happy with his 15-month tenure at the quasi-governmental authority and that he is simply moving on to “greener pastures” with “a drastic cut in pay.”
Hugo Hodge Sr., the former WAPA executive director, was paid $210,000 annually — more than the governor.
Clinton Hedrington Jr. will be named acting executive director of the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA).