January 22, 2018
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.
The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is “to protect human health and the environment.” Disgraced EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt tried his best to undermine this vital mission by choosing to slash critical health protections and let corporate polluters off the hook. Now that Pruitt’s been booted, we need an EPA administrator dedicated to undoing his toxic agenda and restoring the agency to its core mission. Progress is possible and necessary – but another corporate crony or climate skeptic will not get us there.
Scott Pruitt is gone, but the fight is just beginning. We need an EPA administrator who puts our health and environment first, period. Any alternative is unacceptable.
