Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt | Courtesy of the White House, photo by Mitchell Resnick
Finally, it is not surprising that the Trump administration is pursuing its agenda of corporate cronyism with as little public disclosure and involvement as possible.
An early indicator of Pruitt’s penchant for secrecy was his refusal to publish his daily schedule, as previous EPA administrators had done. When a redacted version of Pruitt’s schedule was finally released (after requestors sued), it showed that over a five-month period he had more than 100 meetings or calls with industry representatives. His five meetings or calls with environmental or science representatives made up just one percvnet of his scheduled meetings. The EPA is stonewalling on thousands of public and media requests for information, and it recently adopted a new policy of processing all the older requests first, ensuring that it won’t get to requests relevant to Trump administration activities for months or years to come.
The Administration has hired at least 15 former energy lobbyists for EPA, Interior, and DOE positions, and used ethics waivers (in many cases withheld from the public) to allow them to work on the same matters they lobbied on. More broadly, the Trump administration is largely refusing to respond to congressional oversight requests received from Democratic members, even Committee Ranking Members.
Zinke’s report to the president making recommendations to shrink National Monuments still has not been made public, and the process through which it was developed remains entirely opaque -– while the public submitted more than 1.4 million comments, which overwhelmingly opposed any changes, it is not clear whether those were considered in any way. Similarly, many agencies have not even revealed the membership of the panels that are reviewing regulations, let alone provided any insight into the process. Many regulatory actions are being reversed through abbreviated processes that include a fraction of the public participation that informed the original action. Agencies have held few public hearings on proposed changes and have limited comment periods on numerous proposals to only 30 days, rather than the 60 or 90 days most commonly provided. Federal agencies are busy giving corporations special favors, and the public is being shut out.
It’s no coincidence that a government populated by lobbyists and industry hacks, which is dedicated to tearing down safeguards that have broad support from the American public, is trying to keep these facts as opaque and closed off as possible. But it is certainly depressing, and something the Sierra Club is fighting every step of the way.