Probe by EPA Office of Inspector General into Administrator’s Travel and Mismanagement Drags on into Ninth Month
Washington, D.C. – On a day EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt testified before a U.S. Senate committee, the Environmental Integrity Project released a letter signed by more than 300 former EPA employees demanding that the EPA Inspector General complete his investigation of Pruitt’s travel and management, now dragging into its ninth month.
The letter is addressed to EPA Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins, Jr., whose office on August 28, 2017, announced its intention to investigate potential ethics violations pertaining to Pruitt’s travel expenses.
“As former employees of EPA who served both Republican and Democratic Administrations, we are deeply concerned that the numerous scandals surrounding Administrator Pruitt have compromised the agency’s mission and damaged the morale of its work force, while the evidence increasingly shows that millions of dollars are being wasted that could be better spent protecting public health and the environment,” the EPA veterans said in the letter.
“We write to respectfully request that you complete your investigation and present your findings as soon as possible, so that EPA can better focus on its statutory responsibilities,” the letter states.
Public records requests by the Environmental Integrity Project produced EPA documents that showed that the EPA Administrator spent almost half of his days during his first three months in office on travel that included stops in his home state of Oklahoma. Testimony to Congressional researchers by a former Trump Administration appointee to EPA revealed that Pruitt frequently asked his staff to come up with reasons to make his taxpayer-funded travel back home seem like a legitimate business expense.
An attachment to the letter sent to the EPA Inspector General includes a list of several potential ethical violations by Pruitt. The document notes that EPA employees “have a duty to act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual” and “may not accept gifts from registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations, and must make proper disposition by paying fair market value.” The possible ethics violations by Pruitt include:
- Pruitt’s $50-per-night lease agreement, covering February through April of 2017, for an apartment owned by Vicki Hart was significantly below market value for the Washington DC area. Vicki Hart is the wife of J. Steven Hart, chairman of the lobbying firm Williams & Jensen, which represented clients on at least half a dozen matters before the EPA during Pruitt’s lease, most notably a pipeline-expansion plan recently approved by EPA.
- Pruitt has reserved his time almost exclusively for meetings with industry representatives, and has granted almost no time to opposing viewpoints.
- Pruitt has frequently met privately with industry representatives just before major regulatory decisions directly benefiting the parties in question. For example, Pruitt met with officials from Fitzgerald Truck Sales, the nation’s largest manufacturer of truck components known as gliders, on May 8, 2017. On August 17, 2017, Pruitt announced the repeal of recently approved emissions and fuel efficiency standards for gliders, specifically in light of “significant issues” raised by stakeholders in the industry.
- Pruitt’s decision to replace six qualified university experts on the Science Advisory Board with representatives of manufacturers, petrochemicals, and other regulated industries, as well as his new policy of barring all scientists who have received any EPA funding, serves no rational function except to sharply limit expertise to industry sources.
- From July 6 to October 20, 2017, Pruitt held at least seventeen closed door meetings with agribusiness, farm groups, and other industries to discuss proposed repeal and changes to the Waters of the U.S. rule. The rulemaking docket contains no information about Pruitt’s remarks at these meetings, from which members of the public and media were barred.
- As an Oklahoma state senator in 2003, Pruitt purchased a luxury home from telecom giant AT&T, which was actively lobbying the legislature on several matters at the time, at nearly $100,000 below its fair market value. Pruitt ultimately sided with AT&T on all these matters.
- Pruitt reclassified two political aides, Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp, as “administrative hires” under a provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act, in order to grant them extraordinary pay raises previously expressly denied by the White House.
- In June of 2017, Pruitt and a retinue of staff spent a week traveling to Italy at a cost of over $120,000, which included a cost of over $39,000 for his personal security detail alone, as well as expensive meals and lodging in five star hotels. Some of these high costs, including a $36,000 chartered military jet from Cincinnati to New York enabling Pruitt to catch his flight to Italy, were incurred for a visit and private tour of the Vatican, which was not clearly related to the official business of the EPA.
- In December of 2017, Pruitt and a retinue of staff spent four days traveling to Morocco at a cost of over $100,000, which included $16,217 for Pruitt’s Delta Air Lines fare and $494-per-night stays in a luxury hotel in Paris.
- Pruitt has routinely flown using first and business-class accommodations citing security concerns, in spite of an October 17, 2017 memo from a member of Pruitt’s personal security detail noting that there were “no known investigations… concerning threats to Scott Pruitt,” as well as a February 14, 2018 memo from EPA’s Office of Homeland Security Intelligence Team emphasizing that no credible security threat existed justifying such costs.
For a copy of the letter, including a list of those who signed it, click here.
The Environmental Integrity Project is a 15-year-old nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, based in Washington D.C., dedicated to enforcing environmental laws and holding polluters and governments accountable to protect public health.
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Media contact: Tom Pelton, Environmental Integrity Project (202) 888-2703 or tpelton@environmentalintegrity.org
